The Best Way to Increase Website Conversions?

There's no question that the marketplace is loaded with vendors offering solutions to increase website conversions. With an increased drive toward true alignment of search marketing and site optimization for online shopping, it would seem that a majority percentage of people arriving on a website would buy.

But they're not.

In fact most organizations rarely have better than a 1% conversion rate for all unique traffic. What's worse is that many of these organizations have less than 1% unique traffic conversion. Yet, marketing directors and other leaders responsible for online sales in organizations whose names you probably know, continue to burn through massive online budgets, running large infrastructures and managing large teams for what amounts to an anemic performance.

Increasing conversion is the only thing that matters online.

You've really got to sit down and ask yourself why these organizations think the only way to increase revenues is to increase traffic. This is insane. For starters, traffic is not infinite. In fact, most website traffic will never come back to your site. The majority of good prospects are lost to no decision at all.

If you think your traffic is going to come back and buy from you, you'd better think again.

* In a study released by BizRate and The NPD Group, more than 10,000 consumers were surveyed. Respondents indicated what occurred after they abandoned the shopping cart:

* 39% did not purchase the item at all

* 26% purchased the product from a competitor

* 17% made their purchase offline

* 18% returned to the site to make the purchase at a later time.

The next largest group of departing site traffic is driven into the arms of the competition. When you consider how poorly sites convert, you've got to wonder why people continue to burn cash and other valuable resources on traffic without looking closer at this problem.

Instead, marketers should first re-focus on making the site convert better, THEN turn up the tap on traffic. The etailing Group found in a study that 47% of e-commerce directors didn't even know their abondoment rate.

Embarassing.

What's worse, consider the following facts:
* 35% of online shoppers find navigating sites difficult (Yankee Group)
* 20% of online shoppers find technical glitches frustrating (Zendor)
* 61% of people who abandon may not come back (Zendor Study)
* 55% of online shoppers are reluctant to provide their credit card information online (Yankee Group)
* Consumers, on average, spend more than 19 hours deciding where to buy online for a given purchase. (ScanAlert)

The fastest way to long term conversion improvements.

One of the best ways to increase site traffic without wholesale changes to navigation and graphics is with real human beings. Deploy a service that offers live chat to site visitors when they arrive based upon some entry criteria like the keywords they used to find your site in the first place. Chat is anonymous and non-confrontational for site visitors who genuinely would appreciate some help.

Staff that chat system with trained sales agents who know your products and can properly qualify based upon the most common needs of your visitors. Be careful not to overload those agents with too much traffic or you'll burn your brand with yet another version of poor customer service. Offer people the ability to speak with your agents on the phone during that sales cycle and conversions will go up even higher.

Then measure those results.

Is it that easy?

Probably not, but you won't know if you don't try. And with websites converting less than 1% of traffic, it would be hard for things to get much worse. Realistically though, you WILL increase conversions.

If you do it right, conversions will DOUBLE. What would that mean for your revenues?

People like to buy from people.

A sale is not just a transaction...it is a transfer of positive energy from one person to another. It is one person helping another make a solid buying decision. Imagine going to the mall and no one being in any store to help you. That would seem weird wouldn't it?

So why do we think it's normal to abandon decades of learning and retailing best practices from with on-line stores? Forget about new navigation and fancy graphics for now. Leverage something that will always be more powerful: the human element.

Then outsource it.

Brooks helps organizations convert existing traffic into revenue without increasing advertising spend.
http://www.onlinesalesaccelerator.com

The Battle For Your Hosting Account

There is a quite battle being waged everyday all over the world. It is being fought house to house and street to street. It is a battle of incredibly high stakes and most people have no clue it exists including some of those who are called on to fight it.

The battle being fought isn't over land or oil or drugs. It's being fought over data traffic moving over the internet. I know your thinking that's a bit melodramatic but it is a fact. There is currently a legislative effort being pushed through to strip away fundamentally rights we as citizens of the internet have grown accustomed to.

Like no other place on earth, every person's data flow over the internet is created equal. No one user gets higher ranking than any other. No hosting company delegates which customer's data moves through the backbone of the information superhighway first or last. This is the truest form of equality the human race has ever seen. Which means someone isn't squeezing every last cent out of the system. And for the largest service providers, both ISP and hosting, that can't be allowed.

The battle being waged over this fundamentally right goes by the name 'Net Neutrality'. And like most battles fought in government it's been started by lobbying groups for a specific industry. In this case service providers want to be able to offer tiered service. If you the end user wants to have a blazing fast connection you're going to have to pay twice. You're going to have to pay your monthly broadband fees and then a second fee for high priority transmissions. Online retailers are going to be in for a world of hurt as well which is going to jack up the prices of every product bought or sold online.

A company like amazon.com which serves millions of page views everyday is going to be forced into paying for higher priority transmission service as well. One of the long standing rules of the internet is if you don't give the user content within five seconds they are going to hit the back button and try someone else. Where the bigger problem comes into play isn't the gargantuan online retailers but the small mom and pop boutiques doing business online. The big guys will be able to cut a check to their hosting providers to ensure whatever competitive advantage they can. For smaller businesses with generally higher prices due to lower volume sales anything that cuts into an already slim profit margin will be catastrophic to their financial well being.

And let's not over look the fact that once you give these companies a legal way to discriminate against users and bleed businesses for higher performance they are never going to stop. There will always be a higher tier just waiting for the customer with the deepest pockets.

One of the biggest proponents of giving hosting companies and ISP's the right to screw their customers is Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who famously tried to explain why this is a good idea. His explanation included 'The internets are a series of tubes. And f you send more and bigger trucks down those tubes they should be charged more.' Your elected officials ladies and gentleman.

Learn more at http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/, and http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/top-ten-hosting/, and http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/e-commerce-web-hosting/

An Online Storefront Can Level the Shopping Playing Field

An online storefront can offer customers plenty of options and make shopping online easier and quicker than ever before. Most small business owners don't give these online storefronts the credit they deserve for another advantage that they offer, however. The real consumer revolution is the ease with which small to medium size retailer companies can implement an online storefront and successfully compete with the big dogs of online shopping.

Stores like Amazon, Overstock and a handful of other big box stores offer tons of specials and an easy-to-use template for shopping, but they are getting some stiff competition these days from smaller, regional retailers and specialty boutiques. A few decades ago, this wouldn't have been possible because the regional stores had a limited reach and weren't as easily accessible as large chain stores. Today, however, the no boundaries realm of the Internet means that you can sell your product to customers around the world regardless of whether you're operating from a huge warehouse just outside of a major city or your basement in a midwestern small town.

In the early days of the Internet, many small businesses and boutiques tried their hand at online marketing but weren't as successful as they had hoped. Part of the problem was lack of expertise in designing an appealing website and part of the problem was the lack of an easy-to-use customer interface for a shopping cart. Without the kind of money needed to hire top-of-the-line developers or the know-how to do it themselves, the smaller boutiques and mom-and-pop shops quickly lost customers' interest because it was difficult to browse, order and purchase online.

Fortunately, there are many sources today where businesses can purchase professionally designed templates for online storefronts at reasonable prices. These templates are polished, attractive, professionally designed storefront solutions that can be tailored to the individual needs of any company or service. Small businesses and stores no longer have to rely on inexpensive solutions that end up looking cheap compared to the mega stores they are competing with. With an online storefront, a two-person operation can look as slick and modern as the multinational competition.

The latest storefront solutions offer hundreds of different templates tailored to all kinds of industries, including interior design, medical and legal, apparel, electronics, business-to-business and personal services. With a wide array of templates to fit a company's specific industry, customizing it for a "perfect fit" is easy to do and can give exceptional results. Stunning colors, outstanding graphics and professional photography are now within reach for even the smallest boutique-style website, giving them a huge presence and massive appeal. Customized color options, lettering and the option to upload your own company logo or showroom photos mean that a website designed using an online storefront template looks just as good as those designed from scratch by high-priced private design firms.

One of the problems smaller businesses can have when they establish an Internet presence is how to give plenty of options that will make shopping easier for the customer without breaking their operating budgets. Online storefront packages offer a great solution. The code is already written, the ability to make changes remotely is built-in and the designs are extremely intuitive for shoppers. If an online boutique tried to have a complex shopping system built from the ground up, it could cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. But a shopping cart template included with an online storefront program can offer options like the ability to add new products and services whenever needed and easy methods for changing photos and descriptions as inventory changes. Programs can also include inventory tracking, purchase, discount and exchange features that are easy to use and even sales, coupons and special discounts for customers.

Check out some online retailers the next time you're browsing the Internet. We bet you'll be amazed at the impressive online storefronts you'll find being operated by small businesses, if you can figure out which ones those are.

Andy West is a writer for AspDotNetStorefront, a premier online storefront and shopping cart provider. Visit http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com/ for your online storefront needs.

Web 2.0 Goldmine- A Comprehensive Approach To Using Web 2.0 To Drive Free Traffic To Your Website

Web 2.0 Goldmine offers a comprehensive plan for any business- large or small- that may be interested in optimizing their website to achieve high natural search engine rankings. Information is presented so that any user, regardless of knowledge of Web 2.0 can obtain a full understanding along with a step by step plan of implementing Web 2.0 into their business.

"When I began looking for ways to optimize our various businesses websites it become apparent there were many components to a comprehensive Web 2.0 implementation- but not one single source that could explain a step by step implementation plan. So, while configuring our own Web 2.0 plans for our own sites, we took it a step further and developed this guide for all business owners", Chad Bates, author of Web 2.0 Goldmine explained. "Web 2.0 has been proven to have tremendous amounts of benefits to website owners and businesses- but the challenge has been the enormous amount of time involved to establish a comprehensive Web 2.0 program. We wanted to share our experience on how you can implement a comprehensive plan while also having a life.", Bates explained. Web 2.0 Goldmine offers users many proven tools to help gain the power of search engine optimization without the massive amounts of laborious postings to an extensive number of sites on the internet. These tools allow you to semi automate the process- but still gain the benefits of Web 2.0 strategies.

One of the basic tenets of Web 2.0 is to create a much "wider web" than any single URL might be able to muster themselves. Careful and strategic utilization and knowledge of how search engines work is easily explained in Web 2.0 Goldmine. The material touches on the vast array of tools in Social Networking sites, blogs, article submissions, video use, forums, and many other forms to gain a huge amount of what is known as "backlinking". Full and very complete information is given in each category- along with detailed steps on how to implement Web 2.0 to gain superior search engine rankings that allow highly targeted traffic to any business website.

The real beauty of Web 2.0 Goldmine is the material is concluded with a step by step implementation plan- along with access to numerous tools that help with Web 2.0 implementation. This allows any website or business owner- regardless of their knowledge of the internet- to be able utilize the search engines to their own benefit without the large expenses associated with paying search engine optimization consultants.

Chad Bates is a successful award winning entrepreneur who has founded numerous online and offline companies. He can be reached through one of his websites at http://www.web2-0goldmine.com

Find The Right Hosting Company For Your Online Business

How many times have you had to change hosting companies? For your sake and your sanity I hope the answer is never.

Your website is your digital life. Be it business or a personal blog your website needs to be easily accessible to you at all times to make any changes you may require, from a content, programming or design aspect. And this is normally the case. Most web hosting providers give you a litany of easy to use frontends and desktops with which to manage your site.

Most provide easy FTP access as well. But what happens when you find yourself at the mercy of an unscrupulous service provider who tells you everything you want to hear when signing up but drops the hammer on you when you want to move on?

This unfortunately is more common than you would think and more common than is acceptable. Many low cost web hosting providers have absolutely stupendous rates which they use to lure you in. Once you're signed on that's when the fun begins. If you never have a problem or need support then hooray for you. But oh heaven help you if you need tech support with these budget providers. The first cost cutting measure is to lose any telephone support.

I don't mean some support I mean ALL of it. There's not a phone number listed anywhere. If you do find one it rings into a voicemail box of the janitor's office. If he picks up the phone he doesn't speak English. If you speak his native tongue then he'll quickly switch to something else. If you speak every language they switch to binary. You laugh but I'm serious. Your only assured way to contact these companies is through email. By assured way I mean hitting send over and over on message after message, opening one support ticket after another. When the reply finally comes it is written by a person whose writing classes stopped sometime before third grade, in Afghanistan. Oh and they aren't even replying to your original problem. They are responding to your email asking why they haven't responded.

So you've now decided, after much gnashing of teeth and strewn obscenities, to move your website over to another hosting provider who has better support staffed by people from the planet earth (or one of its close neighbors at the least). My advice is to start the process early. It took me nearly three months to move my site from one of these bottom feeders. Not only do you deal with the standard issues we've already discussed but you get to see an entirely new level of scumbaggery.

While fighting with the provider to free my site, which they locked to their domain servers, my domain registration ran out. They then proceeded to register my domain name, helpfully they claimed, so no one could snatch it out from under me. They were more than willing to hand it over for a small fee of $100.
Moral of the story is don't be cheap. You get what you pay for. A domain stealing janitor from the planet X.

Learn more about web hosting at http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/dedicated-server-web-hosting/, and http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/windows-dedicated-server-hosting/, and http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/cheap-dedicated-server-hosting/.

No Squeaky Wheels with the Online Shopping Cart

Without an online shopping cart, any expectation of reaping sales from an online website is pretty much nil. This handy feature performs a number of important functions, making it the one thing an online retailer cannot do without. After a customer chooses the products he or she wants it is the means for exacting payment in full.

A shopping cart feature allows the retailer to transact an acceptable form of payment safely and securely. The most common method of payment by Internet shoppers is credit card. When a credit card is not used, a bank account can be debited using an electronic check.

Though some websites still provide an address for checks to be sent in, purchasing products and services on the Internet is all about convenience. Both check and credit card can be processed in a matter of moments. This means consumers can expect the products they ordered within a week or less instead of waiting for a week just for a check to clear.

An online shopping cart is generally composed of software that is encrypted. This means any and all personal identification and financial information is kept safe and secure from hackers and Internet thieves. In fact, most features are designed to recognize suspicious activity and alert credit card companies of possible fraud.

Using a safe and secure shopping cart feature gives customers peace of mind. A shopper who is suspicious or displeased with a checkout process will likely take his or her business elsewhere. Once that customer is gone, so is the chance for gaining a repeat customer.

This website feature should be both easy to use and efficient. Smooth running software instills in customers a sense of dealing with a solid, professional online business. Aside from having good products, a checkout process that goes off without a hitch can be one of the most appealing aspects on a retail website.

Depending on what is being sold, a retailer can opt for a simple shopping cart software program or something a little more sophisticated. While some features simply move a consumer through the payment process, others allow individuals to save merchandise, record and log previous searches or even create a list of preferred items.

To keep a flowing customer base, online retailers have to exact a number of different strategies. Without an online shopping cart, a merchant would never be able to collect the valuable contact information of its shoppers. Using this information, a retailer can let previous customers know when sales and other promotions are on the horizon.

This feature works for the online retailer as well, providing information on average credit card sales, what products are selling well and which are not and average price per sale. These are all things that help a retailer better plan his or her business. It can show where an online business needs to add or cut away certain aspects to increase business.

A smart online retailer will put as much thought into his or her shopping cart feature as the products being sold on the site. If it is not something they would use themselves, then it is obviously inefficient and needs improvement. If an individual is new to the concept of online retailing, sometimes the help of an online retail specialist can be of great help.

An online shopping cart is one of the many inconspicuous aspects that can make or break a cyber shopping experience. Many take the feature for granted when it works; but when it doesn't everybody notices. This is why having reliable software should rank high on the retailer's list of imperatives.

Andy West is a writer for AspDotNetStorefront, a premier online shopping cart and storefront provider. Visit http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com/t-s-online-shopping-cart.aspx for you shopping cart needs.

Instant Blog Links- Does This Product Help You Take Your Blog To The Next Level?

Blogging can be a very profitable way to enjoy your passion and also still make money. However, for most bloggers, while they may have a significant amount of expertise in their field and good writing skills, the challenge is being able to set up their blog for profitability- and that means how to get traffic to view their quality material. Here Are All The Features and Benefits You To Gain Control Of With Instant Blog Links: Gain an unlimited number of backlinks from blogs with high PR traffic, search engine spiders, and higher search rankings - Best of all, you can point these links to any page you want for high-impact boosts in your search engine rankings!

In most markets, you can receive hundreds of targeted visitors, within mere days of putting your software to work for the first time. New sales for your affiliate programs, ad sense revenue, or more sales for your product are just moments away!

Get any page you want visited by the search engine spiders - quick, possibly in mere hours. When you put all of your pages to work in the search engines, you increase your revenue exponentially! You won't have to wait months to get results with your new websites. The best part is you do not have to do a lot of laborious individual postings- you just submit to many sites with the push of a single button.

Find and submit to an unlimited number of blogs. Supplied with more keywords, your Instant Blog Links finds potentially tens of thousands of targeted blogs. You can then pick-out the ones most likely to produce results to submit comments to.

Instantly ping dozens of search engines and blog directories whenever you post, so the search engine spiders come running to find your links. You're going to see the first results trickle in within hours!

Quickly identify the blogs with the highest PR to ensure your time is spent wisely -- and you get the most from this technique!

Use optional built-in delays throughout the entire submission process. Being considerate to others is key to making the results last for a long time.

Get full reporting so you can keep track of where your comments have been submitted! This is a HUGE time-saver because you are certain not to submit to the same blog twice!

Keep track of how your pages are doing in the search engines so you can see what pages you need to submit more comments for! Instant Blog Links is the ultimate search engine optimization tool for getting high-quality, quick and easy, traffic-filled links!

View the blog before you submit your comments with the click of a button so that you can personalize to each blog! This ensures your comment is approved by the blog moderator and produces results for many years to come!

Chad Bates is a successful award winning entrepreneur who has founded numerous online and offline companies. He can be reached through his one of his websites at http://instant-blog-links.com/

Google Ads Can Cost A Lot- Does This System Help You Get Google Ads For Free?

Via a secret revealed in this product a retired MD has amassed a huge fortune. In keeping with being ethical in our review- we cannot reveal the basis for the "secrets" of how to Get Google Ads for free. What we can do is tell you there is a huge number of testimonials since this product has been released that give this product a strong level of credibility. Couple that with the fact that the author, Dr. Jon Cohen MD, noted internet businessman, who has amassed a huge fortune- estimated at over $ 68 Million net worth- individually is using this technique that he teaches in this system.

Included in Get Google Ads for Free for a limited time is Dr. Jon's Power Lessons for Google. Included in this training is an outline of how you can outspend your competition by using this method- to insure you get # 1 ranking among sponsored links in the keyword category of your choice. This product has been demonstrated successfully in a variety of industries- so you can purchase it with full confidence. Now, with this system- outspending your competition does not mean eliminating all your profits.

We give this product a full endorsement for those that will implement the techniques to build their business and offset those tremendously high costs of sponsored links. An added bonus is the concepts work not only on Google- but also on Yahoo, MSN and all the other search engines who sell sponsored links.

Google is by far the # 1 search engine on the internet today- some estimate a commanding 70%+ of all traffic for searches goes through Google. Considering all the other search engines out there on the internet today- that is truly an amazing statistic. Naturally- with it being very difficult, costly and tedious to get and maintain high search engine rankings there is a high demand for premium paid "sponsored links" to help drive traffic to websites. Google does this through a competitive bid process- which due to demand- can be quite expensive. Google themselves manifests the constant challenge of maintaining a high search engine ranking as they are constantly changing the search engine algorithms so you might be # 1 one day- and fall off the map the next! So, what is an entrepreneur to do to try and compete with this high bidding environment of costly adwords campaigns?

This is one of those once in a lifetime products here folks that you cannot afford to miss. The information in here alone is enough to change your financial future!

Chad Bates is a successful award winning entrepreneur who has founded numerous online and offline companies. He can be reached through one of his websites http://www.get-googleads-free.com/

Even eBay Is Getting Into Social Networking

As the largest marketplace in the world, I'm sure that you have had some experience on eBay as a buyer or seller. If you have sold or are currently selling items on eBay, you know that just like any other site on the net, your success depends on how much traffic you get to your auctions or your store. EBay has a relatively new tool that you can utilize to help create more traffic. It is the same tool used by most marketers who are utilizing social networking to drive traffic.

Social networking is a phenomenon that has reached popularity of unmatched proportions in user traffic. Sites like MySpace and Facebook are examples of social networking sites. These are sites where the users create all of the content. The users also create networks of that content and in so doing create large like minded groups.

The granddaddy of social networking is blogging. What started out as an online diary has become mainstream tools for disseminating any kind of information you could possibly imagine. Blogs have also become a major marketing tool for internet marketers. Why am I telling you about social networking and blogs since what you are interested in is driving traffic to your eBay auctions? The reason is, you can now start your own eBay blog.

For the same reasons blogs have become good marketing tools outside of eBay, a blog inside of eBay can be a useful marketing tool. Blogs add exposure of your products and you as the seller to the ebay buying public. If someone is searching the ebay blogs about the product niche they are interested in, if they find a good blog post on your eBay blog, they are likely to visit your auctions or your store. It is one more way to get traffic to your actions.

There is even a greater benefit than just eBay traffic. The blogs on eBay, just like blogs off eBay are indexed by the search engines very quickly. If you tag your eBay blogs with the proper keywords, your blog post could end up in Google search results.

EBay blogs are very versatile in terms of the content you can post. There is support for audio and there is support for video. You can literally sell in person by inserting a video in your blog. You don't want to make your blog a blatant sales page, but you can gently suggest they check out your auctions.

Your eBay blog entries should be, again like off eBay blogs, informational, useful and interesting to the visitor. If your blog reads like an advertisement, your visitor will click away and won't come back. If the reader finds useful information about the products or niche that they are interested in, they will stay and read and most likely visit your auction from there.

EBay has an incredible volume of traffic. To be successful as an eBay seller, you want to have as many views of your auctions and store items as possible. The more visits, the more bids, and the higher your selling price will be. EBay blogs are a relatively new tool that you as an eBay seller can take advantage of to enhance your selling efforts. Not only will it help to bring eBay traffic to your auctions, it could also bring non eBay traffic to your auctions.

To find out how you can follow the advice of a highly profitable eBay eBook seller, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/e-z-sell-ebooks

Send SMS Messages Online

Ever wondered what could be the best way to stay in touch with your family and friends when e-mails and chat is no longer the exciting method and not a possible way when your friends are offline. Welcome to online texting, the surest way to reach your friends
anytime (whether they are offline or online), and that to without wasting time in keying in your message on the small keypad of your mobile.

The online texting or sending SMS online is a new and exciting way of being in touch. Fast catching up as a need rather than a leisure activity online texting is the easiest way of getting connected. Sending SMS online is very easy and can be used by a layman effectively. To send online message saves time and compared to your mobile plan is absolutely free of cost.

What you need to do is to visit the service provider and follow some really simple steps. First step is to enter the receiver's cell phone number in the mentioned field. While doing so remember not to use dashes or other characters other than the number and to enter the area code as well. The second step is to enter the subject of the message you want to send. It helps the receiver in identifying the content of the message.

The third step is to enter your message you intend to send to the receiver and here you need to remember that the limit o the message is 140 words. So enter the precise message and continue to the final step. The fourth step is to choose the receivers cellular service provider from the given list. And the final step is to click on the send text message button to send the message. Using these simple steps your message is delivered to the person you want to send it to.

Isn't it a simple way of sending your message across without you or the receiver paying anything for using the service.

Most of the websites ensure that by using this service you can cut on the fee you pay your cellular service provider for sending those important as well as cheeky messages to your friends. Not only it's 100% free but they also ensure that you get the service to every corner of the United States and that is why almost every cellular service provider is listed. With the quality service it is also ensured that your receiver never receives a spam message or advertisement on his number. The websites respect complete privacy of our users and keep the data secured.

So the next time you use online texting services be assured that your message will be delivered in no time and as said absolutely free. You can even prank your friends because of the anonymous text messaging, which means that your friends will never know who sent them the text message! So enjoy sending those texts online using free online SMS service and bring a smile on many faces.

For more information visit our website http://www.textforfree.net

Accumulating Business with a Reliable Ecommerce Storefront

The ecommerce storefront is one of the most valuable tools for the online retailer. No matter what the main product is, there is a web-store that can perfectly showcase a site's goods. There is a vast array of designs available, from the super simple to the wonderfully chic and sophisticated.

It is fairly easy to see that a site with one product does not need an overly elaborate storefront. Just the same, a site that sells many different products cannot get away with a basic, one-dimensional design either. Both need a storefront that is not only a good fit but offers adaptability as well.

Naturally, an ecommerce storefront needs to be attractive, neat and concise. The wise online retailer will experiment with a number of designs before making a final decision on a look. An attractive design on a site that sells perfumes is not likely be the best design for selling fishing poles.

The result of a storefront that is well put together can be seen in sales. Selling anything online means competing with hundreds of thousands of other websites. Online retailers need to employ all the best features and aspects they can to get noticed, attract customers and keep them coming back.

Internet shopping allows the convenience of being able to find anything and everything a person could possibly want or need within a click of a mouse. However, many online shoppers have become weary of illegitimate websites over the years. One that is ill kempt, sloppy or neglected is likely to scare off customers in droves.

Many who do online retailing opt to get a professionally designed online store. Many times these services that provide web-stores can offer not only a design, but also a package deal that helps with everything from integration to troubleshooting. This can be a blessing for the individual who is new to the world of online retailing.

At the same time, these designs are very easy to operate and require little in the way of technical savvy to maintain. The ability to customize a design means being able to adapt for the adding or removal of products. A site that is regularly updated with correct pricing and product information results in higher sales.

A package design is also a good idea for those individuals wanting or needing to sell a product online but do not have a website. Many times the software can be leased from a service provider for a nominal monthly fee. This is an excellent option for the person who only sells products on a seasonal basis.

An online storefront can be as economic as a retailer needs. Like with any brick and mortar business, the main rule of thumb is to start small and build up from there. As the cyber business takes off and begins to develop, one can appropriately expand little by little.

Because the Internet never has closing hours, many service providers include round the clock customer service along with a guarantee on their product. This guarantee can include the update of software as needed to keep up with changing technology. Keeping a site operating in a smooth and unhampered manner is the key to gaining a good reputation amongst customers.

It does not take long before an online retailer is running his or her ecommerce storefront like a pro. With time and experience one will be able to tell just by looking what will increase sales and what will stagnate them out of existence. This can end up negatively or positively affecting a retailer's bottom line.

Andy West is a writer for AspDotNetStorefront, a premier ecommerce storefront and shopping cart provider. Visit http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com/t-s-online-storefront.aspx for your e-commerce needs.

How To Use Ebooks To Create More Products

Ebooks are the most widely sold information products on the internet. Most internet marketers sell ebooks. It is a great way to start your internet marketing business. Once you get the basics of internet marketing by selling ebooks, you can actually use those same ebooks to create several other products.

As I said, ebooks are a great way to start online marketing. The trick is to find quality sets of ebooks that you can resell or rebrand. Ebooks that have resell rights, you can sell but can't change. Ebooks that are sold as PLR or Private Label Rights ebooks can usually be used in any manner that you wish.

The first and most obvious way to market ebooks is to sell them individually. That is usually the way most internet marketers start. Of course, your ebooks must have come with Resell Rights to do that.

The next step would be to combine a number of ebooks from the same niche into sets. You can sell the sets out right or you can use the sets as an upsell when you sell a single book in the same or a related niche. For example, if you sold an ebook about cooking chicken, you could create a set of ebooks showing how to cook, beef, pork and fish to compliment the chicken ebook.

If you have ebooks with PLR authority, you can do a lot more to create extra products. You can create a new master ebook by combining two or more ebooks on the same subject. The resulting product would be a new ebook that would be your unique product.

Another way to use ebook PLR content is to break an ebook into small segments and use them as articles. You can use the articles for your internet marketing efforts or you can sell the articles as an article pack for that niche.

Another way to use a PLR ebook to create another product is to read aloud an ebook into a digital recorder. The resulting audio recording would be a new audio product that again would be your unique product. You can sell the audio by itself as a product or you could use it as an upsell to the ebook you recorded.

There are many other iterations and combinations of these strategies that you can use to create multiple products. You could go for quite a long time with one good set of ebooks creating all kinds of unique products. You could sell a new product you created from the ebooks every week or everyday, if you can create them fast enough.

All of these product ideas are in addition to the regular ebook business you started. You can continue to sell ebooks, since you can automate that process quite easily, while you utilize the ebooks to create more products that you can get more revenue from.

The process depends upon being able to find a good quality collection of ebooks with Resale Rights and Private Label Rights right from the start. Make sure you obtain your ebooks from a reputable seller who stands behind his business.

Ebooks are a great way to start your online career. Not only can you take advantage of the products as they are and start making a living on the direct sales they generate, you can also start to create more products utilizing those same ebooks to broaden your portfolio. You can never have enough good products to sell. The more you can sell the faster you will reach your online goals.

To find out how you can INSTANTLY receive your own product, your own ebook sets and follow a successful and highly profitable system to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/e-z-sell-ebooks

Top 2 Hottest Online Businesses

Do you like to write? Have you dreamed of seeing your name in print? It is possible to make money as a freelance writer. The term freelance may be misinterpreted by aspiring writers. One may assume that work will be hard to come by. This is not true if you are willing to do research and can produce quality work. Thanks to the Internet, a myriad of possibilities exist. Finding writing gigs, is not as difficult as it seems. There is a high demand for writers and freelancers in just about any area of expertise. Today, companies are interested in saving dollars and time by electing to freelance work; instead, of the hassle of overhead and overhead expenses. Online magazines are a good place to start. It seems that most are looking for writers. However, you may have to start off writing for free. Yet, you are still making your name known to viewers and building respect with the magazine. It also, looks great in your portfolio. Some websites may also list companies looking for freelance writers.

The research for finding writing opportunities is time consuming, but rewarding when you find yourself writing, getting published, and getting paid.

Websites to Consider
1. www.writersdigest.com
This is a very helpful website, besides having writing job listings.
2. www.writersweekly.com
3. www.sunoasis.com
4. www.mediabistro.com
5. www.fwointl.com
You can sign up for their weekly email newsletter, which is loaded with tips for writers, and possible markets.

As a freelance writer, you will find that most potential clients expect to be able to view your portfolio . This allows them to gain perspective of your writing style and ability. If you dont have a portfolio they may ask you to provide a sample writing on a topic the employer suggest. Do not be intimidated. This is common procedure.

Ebay/Online Auctions

Ebay is the most popular online auction community. It is also a lucrative source of income for sellers. Selling is easy and fun with Ebay tools and its large community. If you have a solid product, a well written sales letter, and patience, online auctions can be a lucrative and successful online business. You do not have to be an expert to sell on Ebay or any other online auction site. I most cases, the tools are already in place. The buyers are ready to bid. The key to success is the product. It has to be a product that buyers want. It does not have to be expensive or unique just easy to sell. As an auctioneer research is required an necessary to discover what items are hot and which ones are not. Take the time to do a little research and business will be running itself in no time.

Scott Johns runs a penny stock company that ranks very high with users and Google. Take a look at http://thequarry.net

Ebooks: The Easiest Way To Start Internet Marketing

You might be considering becoming an internet marketer. But I'm sure you have some trepidation. You are probably thinking that you don't have anything to sell. That's the easiest problem to solve. You can start with the easiest item to sell, ebooks.

Ebooks belong to a product group called information products. There are several types of information products. Along with ebooks, there are audio products and video products. They are called information products because that is what they contain, information about some subject that a specific group or niche is interested in.

Ebooks are an easy way to start out online for a number of reasons. They are readily available. You can find collections of ebooks that come with resell rights. When you purchase ebooks with resell rights, you can sell them and keep all of the proceeds for your sales. There is no royalty or anything else you have to pay. Whatever you sell them for becomes your money.

Another reason ebooks are a good way to start an online business is because there is no physical inventory. You do not have to store ebooks. They reside on your computer, they are just computer files. Once you have them, you have them, no need to restock. You will never run out no matter how many you sell.

If you were selling a physical product, you would need to ship it out when a sale is made. That means that you would need to pack it, post it and take it to the post office. Ebooks require no effort on your part to deliver to your customers. The entire sales process can be automated so that you don't have to do anything when a sale is made. The automated system will send an email to the buyer with the ebook attached or the system will send an email with instructions explaining to the buyer how to log on to the internet to download their purchase.

Ebooks can be sold a number of different ways. You can set up your own website, with your own domain, and sell them from there. Just starting out, it might be easier not to have your own site. The easiest way to start selling ebooks is on eBay.

EBay is the largest marketplace in the world. EBay claims that during any month, one third of all internet traffic stops at eBay. Ebay may also be the largest ebook marketplace. Approximately two thousand ebooks are sold on ebay each day. Forty six percent of all ebooks listed sell.

It is very easy to set up an eBay selling account. You can do it in minutes and be online with your ebooks for sale almost instantly. Ebay also makes it easy to set up your own ebook store. You could list literally hundreds of ebooks at practically no cost.

If you really want to get into online marketing, the easiest way to do that is to sell ebooks. The fastest way to get up and running is to sell ebooks on eBay. You can literally have an ebook business up and running in minutes. So what are you waiting for!

To find out how you can INSTANTLY receive your own product, and follow a successful and highly profitable system to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ezsellebooks.com

Increase Sales Page Conversion With Basic Graphic Elements

Your sales page is your most important tool for online marketing. It is the one piece that directly leads to a sale. Everything else is just a build up to the sales page. With out the sales page, you have no sales. The tiniest change in the conversion rate of your sales page can have dramatic effects on your profits. One way to increase your sales rate, is to use the proper graphical elements on your sales page.

There are 6 basic graphical elements you should use to enhance the conversion rate of your sales page.

They are:

1. The Header
2. Graphics for bullet points
3. Graphics for product
4. Graphics for the guarantee
5. The Pay Button
6. The Footer

The header brands your site. It can also be used as part of your personal branding, depending how you market yourself and your product. The header sets the tone of the sales letter and can do as much to draw the users attention as the headline. A great header can be the stimulus for your prospect to read your sales letter.

Graphics for bullet points separate and draw attention to features and benefits that you want your prospect to see. Even if your prospect is quickly browsing down the page, these graphical designs, usually oversized check marks, will grab the visitor's attention and cause them to stop and look.

Graphics for your product is the visual that your prospective customer has to have. A product with out some visual representation is not going to sell. Customers want to see what they are buying. Online, your buyer cannot pick up and hold the product so they must have a visual que to push them along the path to the ultimate buying decision.

Graphics for the guarantee is what draws attention to the guarantee to make sure it is not missed by the prospect. As you lead the visitor step by step through the buying process, you want to make sure their attention is properly funneled to the main selling sections of the page. The guarantee, as one of those selling sections needs a significant graphic to ensure the potential buyer realizes the guarantee alleviates his concern of risk. A guarantee medal or seal is commonly used along with an offsetting guarantee frame.

The Pay Button is the final step in the sales process. It is the call to action. It tells the potential buyer exactly what to do next. It tells the buyer: "CLICK RIGHT HERE TO BUY NOW!" A great big, in your face, can't miss this graphical button with the directions on it will make sure your visitor knows exactly what to do and where to do it.

Finally, the Footer is your last stab at the prospect. If the prospect has read down that far, he has passed your pay button by, and apparently has decided not to buy. A properly done graphic footer could be just the small nudge your potential customer needs to scroll back up and buy.

Your sales page is a selling system. It is designed section by section to slowly grab your customer and lead him to the inevitable conclusion that he has to buy. The proper graphics through out the sales page will highlight each section, each stage of the selling process, so that your prospect follows the correct path. The closer you can get the prospect to follow your sales letter's path, the easier it will be to convert your prospect to a buyer.

To find out how you can utilize graphics and design templates to enhance your online business, and get profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson-online-design.com

Is Your Web Page Designer Hurting Your Business?

Your website is your income producer. Your sales page is your direct link to your customer. Your sales page is designed to lead your prospect step by step through a systematic realization that a buying decision must be made. The question is, is the person or firm designing your sales page, hurting or helping that process?

Your sales page is made up of specific sections, each one having it's own unique purpose in the sales process. The headline gets your prospect interested. The sub headline keeps him interested. The product graphic helps the prospect visualize the product. The bullet points tell your prospect why they must have your product. The guarantee creates the proper comfort level and the order button is the call to action that seals the deal.

Every one of the preprogrammed steps in your sales process has to work for your prospect to buy. If there is a breakdown in any of those pieces, chances are, you won't have a buyer.

The person or firm designing your web page has to know this step by step process. They have to know the process in order to design a page that enhances and emphasizes each of the selling sections of your page. If they don't know sales, then the chances are they will not know where the emphasis should be.

If the proper sections in the proper order are not emphasized they will be missed. Most visitors to your sales page will not read the whole page. Most will browse through the page picking up on the emphasized parts. If your designer is emphasizing the wrong places in your sales page, it won't work. Your visitor will miss the areas you absolutely want him to see.

On the other hand, if your designer has some knowledge of internet marketing, or direct marketing, then they should be able to create a page that will increase your conversion rates because they know how to utilize the right graphic elements in the right places. The result of that is, your prospect will be drawn specifically to the points in the sales page that he or she needs to see in order to lead them to the sale.

A graphic designer that does not know internet marketing, does not know the sales process will not be able to provide you an optimized sales page. They may be great graphic artists, and will most likely produce a great looking page. The graphics on the page might knock your socks off. The trouble is, the page won't produce sales.

It will look great, but will be ineffective. That is the trap that many new internet marketers find themselves in. They hire someone to create their site, including the sales page. It is created by someone who knows graphics, not sales. Then they wonder why their gorgeous website doesn't produce any sales.

Your business is only as good as your sales page. If you let someone create it for you that does not know sales, it will produce poorly. Make sure you use a designer that knows how to create effective sales pages that follow the complete selling process. Make sure your sales page is optimized, otherwise you will be wondering why your sales page doesn't sell.

To find out how you can utilize graphics and design templates to enhance your online business, and get profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson-online-design.com

Keyword Density: Tips for Business Success

Now that you have selected a set of keywords for your website, what do you do with them? Keywords are words that describe the main topics of information for a website. This means that the text of your website should include these carefully selected keywords.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is a measure that indicates how many times a particular keyword appears in the text of your website, expressed as a percentage. To calculate the keyword density, first count the number of times the keyword appears on a page (you can easily do this by using the "find" feature on a word processing program). Next, divide the keyword count by the total number of words in the text, and multiply by 100 to get the keyword density percentage.

Keyword Tips

*Keyword density should be between 1% and 3%. Anything more might be treated as keyword stuffing, the overuse of a keyword in the text in an effort to rank higher for that keyword on a search engine results page. This practice can backfire big-time, causing the search engine to ignore your website.

*A lower keyword density is best when used in conjunction with other related keywords on the same page. Most search engine spiders have an almost intuitive way of determining the relevance of a topic. Displaying related terms on the same page shows the spider that the keyword topic is relevant. If your keyword is "lovely roses," related terms would be "flowers," "red roses," "aromatic roses," "rose petals," "rose scent," "beautiful bouquets," and so forth.

*Keywords should read naturally in the text. It is generally best to write about a topic and then check the keyword density. If you need a higher keyword count, you can go back and look for synonymous words that can be substituted with the desired keyword.

*If you make the keyword the topic of your content, proper density should come naturally. Never compromise the flow and interest of your content for the sake of keyword insertion.

*Relevance is everything for website content. If the topic is not relevant to your website, it is not worth displaying. Search engines may skip your website if they cannot find a solid theme to help categorize your website. If you sell cleaning products, your text should talk about stains, fabric treatments, cleaning processes, cleaning tips and cleaning products. If a search engine spider visits your website that sells cleaning products and finds information on how to put a deck on your house and news about Paris Hilton's social life, it is not likely to list your website for keywords pertaining to cleaning products. These may be interesting topics, but they are not relevant to your website.

*Interesting content with relevant keywords will attract visitors and inspire return visits. Returning visitors are more likely to purchase a product or service from your website.

The proper use of keywords can increase your search engine ranking, make it easier for potential customers to find your website and increase your sales by encouraging return visits.

Mike has been online since 2004 building Multiple Streams of Income. He can show you 3 steps to build a massive downline. http://www.profit-unlimited.net Free Website
Mike can also introduce you to the #1 Online Home Business. Click the link and confirm the email mailto:sfi_prospect@getresponse.com

Use Graphics To Highlight Your Guarantee

There are many parts to a good sales page. The headline, the unique selling proposition, the features and benefits, the call to action, to name a few. One of the most important parts of your sales page is your guarantee. The correct use of graphics can add real punch to your guarantee and make it much more effective.

All the parts of your sales page have specific purposes. The headline grabs their attention, the unique selling proposition convinces your prospect that your product is better than anyone else's, the benefits convince your prospect that he needs the product because of everything it will do for him.

As each part has a specific job in the selling process, you want to make sure your prospect doesn't miss any of the sections. The proper use of graphics to draw attention to each of those sections and to highlight each section gives you a better chance at making sure your prospective customer gets all the messages necessary to create a buying decision.

Your guarantee is no different. The guarantee is an important part of your sales process. The guarantee creates the comfort level that the customer needs to feel before the buying action can take place. A prospect that is not comfortable with your offer because they may be taking a risk, will not buy. On the other hand, a customer that knows he has no risk is that much closer to making a positive buying decision.

As an important part of the sales process you want to emphasize the guarantee. You want to make sure your visitor does not miss your guarantee. The correct graphic elements will draw your prospects attention to the guarantee and make sure your visitor gets the warm fuzzy secure feeling that a guarantee provides.

To highlight your guarantee, the first thing you need is a guarantee medal or seal. There are many possibilities as to the design of the medal. The two things it needs to be is easily read, and large enough to make a significant impression on your visitor.

The second way to draw attention to your guarantee is to make sure it is set apart from the body of the sales page. This can usually be accomplished by utilizing tables with backgrounds that contrast with the body. Very often, in order to really emphasize the guarantee, the entire guarantee is made into a graphic. That way you can utilize all kinds of graphic vehicles to enhance and emphasize the guarantee.

One type of graphic I often see used is the use of the internet marketer's own handwriting, making the guarantee more personal and sincere. The only way to do that is with a graphic.

Your sales page is created to lead your prospective buyer step by step to the inevitable conclusion that a purchase must be made. Your guarantee is an important step in that process. The proper graphics in conjunction with a good guarantee will help seal the sale. If you use graphics to enhance your sales page, they will enhance your sales too.

To find out how you can utilize graphics and design templates to enhance your online business, and get profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson-online-design.com

Business Hosting Can Improve Your Business

Business hosting can be an exceedingly complicated affair for any business. Whether it's a small home office selling the next big thing or a multinational service provider the challenge remains.

Stay competitive, stay under budget, always be on and always be right. No big deal! But how to make headway on from the countless number of options available to you the business owner. Let's take a look at some of the available options.

For the purposes of this article we are going to assume you're a small business owner ready to make the leap into the world of the internet. Welcome! Now this should go without saying but free hosting is not an option. I know the price is right but you get what you pay for.

The days of geocities hosting a successful webpage for a successful company are long, LONG gone. And thankfully so. Most customers in today's online world are savvy enough to recognize a free webhosting service when they see it. (Hint-It could be the giant ads slapped all over your company's website for the hosting provider. Call it a hunch.)

At the prices most hosting services charge there is no reason not to have your site on a paid service. After all if you don't have twenty dollars a month to pay rent for your online location you're not even in business.

Paid hosting can be acquired from a multitude of hosting providers. Most offer you several payment options are it monthly quarterly or yearly, with varying discounts for longer term commitments. These packages will offer you a variety of sizes both in storage and bandwidth, email accounts, and server side software implementations.

Don't be discouraged by the complexity of what's on offer. At the beginning of your website odds are the smallest hosting package will be fine. When choosing a provider make sure there is no penalty for upgrading your service as you determine your businesses needs. Most hosting providers are more than happy to work with you as your companies online presence grows.

Things to look for are dedicated support numbers. Most lower priced services only provide support through email. Guaranteed uptime. The industry average is 97% but you never want to lose a sale in the 3% gap. Look for 100% guarantees. Just remember if you're not online, you're losing out!

Data backup is also an important aspect of hosting. The ideal situation is constant online backups at the hosting provider as well as backups to your webpage/database/accounts on your local system as well. There is nothing worse than losing your entire website to a data loss that could have been prevented by an automated backup system.

Trust me, as a business owner there are two words you never want to hear when it involves you company's data "total loss". Other things to stay on the lookout for are server side anti-virus, spam filters, and software packages such as PHP, Joomla, or other content management systems.

As I said before when it comes to hosting, you get what you pay for.

Learn more at http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/dedicated-server-web-hosting/, and http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/windows-dedicated-server-hosting/, and http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/cheap-dedicated-server-hosting/.

Pick Your Hosting Provider Carefully

My hosting experience is I'm sure similar to what a lot of first time web hosting buyers run into, sheer confusion. It seems like there are a million different companies out there offering hosting packages with 500 different options to each one. Where do you even begin to figure out what you need and what you don't. What's overkill and what's unprepared. Which way is up and how do I get out of here? These are all valid questions that I , as well as thousands of others have had to deal with. If you've found this article your dealing with it too. Welcome to web hosting anonymous. Grab a chair and a coffee, I'm here to help.

Before beginning your search for a hosting provider you first have to determine what your needs are. How big of a website are you planning on building. If yours is a niche site, then your needs are completely different from a mammoth ecommerce site like Amazon or iTunes. As you'll see once you begin to search out hosting providers the differences in the price brackets is astounding. No matter what your website encompasses there is a web package built for you with a price you can afford. Everything from free advertising supported sites to several thousand dollar per month dedicated hosting and server farm setups, you can spend as much or as little as your business will need to transition onto the web.

As with any startup there will be growing pains. Again this holds true if we are talking about a personal website selling your handmade cat shoes, or you are launching the next Etrade. Be prepared to go through a period of testing and retesting your website. It is not uncommon to put your site up onto your hosting services system for weeks or months testing and retesting the site until it is ready for public consumption. And consumption is the name of the game when it comes to the web. When most people think of consumption they think of it only in the sense of the physical act of purchasing and using an item . The Big Mac eaten, or the DVD watched, but your first rule of consumption with the internet is bandwidth consumption and managing that against your number of visitors.

If you don't have any traffic you have no bandwidth usage. This is bad. Whether you are selling shiny widgets or slinging advertisements for pay per click, if you don't have eyeballs you don't have a prayer. On the flip side having an abundance of traffic and a very extensive website can kill you, if you are going over your bandwidth allotment form your hosting provider. Like any other aspect in life or business you have to find that perfect balance to keep your site running smooth and turning a profit.

So remember when searching out hosting packages look for larger bandwidth, lots of support, and a pricing structure you can live with that meets your needs and gives you a sense of confidence.

Learn more about hosting at http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/cheap-hosting/ and http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/dedicated-hosting-linux/ and http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/top-ten-hosting/

Search Engine Basics for the Online Business Owner

Every online business owner benefits from understanding the basics of search engine results. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Windows Live Search and Ask are services that index the millions of pages of information on the Internet and categorize them according to topics. This allows a search engine to recall relevant information when a user types a search phrase into the search box. The search engine displays the results of the search in numbered order, with the most relevant pages listed first. This is called the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.

Search Engine Indexing

The Internet is an ever-changing structure of information, with millions of pages of information added or changed every day. The process of indexing such a structure is too tedious and complex to be performed by people. Each search engine creates its own program that continually scans the Internet and compiles an index of the information found. These programs are often called spiders, web crawlers or robots.

Algorithms

Each search engine spider follows a complex series of algorithms created by the search engine programmers. The search engine formulates these algorithms to ensure that a spider indexes information in a meaningful way. For instance, when a user types "diabetes" into a search box, the returned information should discuss the diagnosis, treatment, causes and research pertaining to diabetes--it should not discuss women's fashions. This is called indexing by relevance.

How Indexing Occurs

Google, the world's most popular search engine, uses spiders to crawl the entire known Internet once every 28 days. It follows special links from one website to another and searches its own database of listed websites, hunting for new information. Google creates its own database of information that contains a copy of every page of information it crawls and presents this information to the user in the form of a cached search result. Users have the option of viewing this saved version of a website or seeing the most current version of a site by visiting the selected website's server.

Recent theories suggest that it is not necessary to submit your website manually to each search engine's database. In fact, it is better to let a search engine find your website through links from popular websites or those with similar content to your own.

Why Are SERPs Important?

Because businesses that rank highest on a SERP are likely to get more traffic, these top 10 spots for any given topic are very desirable. A process called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, helps website owners structure their information in a way that is search engine-friendly, which in turn increases their relevance for a given topic and boosts their website's ranking on a SERP.

Search Engine Optimization

Because search engines perpetually use newly-created algorithms, SEO has become a complex and evolving process. Many website owners resort to any tactics available to gain an edge over the competition, even deceiving visitors and spiders when possible. They attempt to gain higher SERP rankings without providing relevant information, or they try to improve their rankings by stuffing their websites full of search terms. For this reason, the algorithms of a search engine have built-in systems to weed out these dishonest tactics and present only relevant search results to the user. Search engines constantly alter their algorithms, and these changes are closely guarded secrets.

Search Engine Competition

Each search engine competes with other search engines for users, just as online businesses compete with each other for customers. This creates a fierce rivalry to provide better results and services for users as they surf the Internet. As a result, various search engines may display the SERP for a given search term, or keyword, in a different order. A website may rank #1 on Google for the term "Internet consultant," but rank #5 for the same term on Yahoo and #30 on Windows Live Search. SEO can often correct this inconsistency.

Search engine optimization is a highly competitive and profitable industry. Online business owners who understand search engine basics are better prepared to position their websites for increased profits.

Mike has been online since 2004 building Multiple Streams of Income. He can show you 3 steps to build a massive downline. http://www.profit-unlimited.net Free Website
Mike can also introduce you to the #1 Online Home Business. Click the link and confirm the email mailto:sfi_prospect@getresponse.com

A Logo Can Help Brand Yourself

As an internet marketer one of your goals is to brand yourself. You want to make sure that you are known as the expert in your niche. You want instant recognition when the subject of your niche comes up. One way to help your branding is to have a logo.

One of the most important parts to the internet marketing puzzle is branding. Branding is creating a profile or reputation as an expert in your field or niche. Branding helps your sales because people like to buy from an expert. Branding helps your relationship with your list as they like getting information from an expert and they trust an expert.

By branding yourself, any product you promote or create, if it is tied to your branding, will have a much better sales result. Once you establish yourself as an expert, you want to have any product or communication or web site to piggyback on your expert status. One way to make sure that happens is to have some type of logo that is associated with you.

If you establish a logo that is associated with you, the expert, then anytime a visitor sees that logo, what ever is utilizing that logo will be associated with you. That association is extremely valuable as it lends credibility and trust to any site, or product that is linked to it.

Your logo is a graphic design that you use on all of your websites in the same or similar niche. The logo can incorporate your picture, your product, a representation of your niche, or just a graphical design using names or initials. I have seen many internet marketers utilize a picture along with a unique representation of their name used as a logo. I see it on most of their websites so there is no doubt whose site or product is being represented.

The logo can be large, a header for example that you use on all of your websites, or it can be small where you can insert it anywhere on the page or even add it to a pre-built header. What ever it is it has to be done in a manner that represents you and reflects your reputation as an expert.

As it represents you, you certainly want it to be a quality piece of graphic art. You want it to be unique and instantly recognizable and you want it to be easily incorporated into your websites.

You should have your logo graphic done by a reputable professional.You certainly don't want it to look like you made an ad hoc logo that isn't of the best quality. Remember, it represents you and your reputation. You might even want to work with a theme that you will use on your websites for your specific niche so that it blends in or compliments the other graphics you use on your sites.

Branding is an important part of internet marketing. You can enhance your branding by associating yourself with a logo that you can utilize in multiple ways. The continuity of using the same branding logo all the time, will add to your overall branding success. Branding success translates into sales success.

To find out how you can utilize graphics and design templates to enhance your online business, and get profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson-online-design.com

The Easy Way and The Hard Way To Create Your Web Page

You are ready to start your sales page layout. You have your sales letter written so now all you need to do is lay out the page and the rest of the site. You have two options, you can do it the easy way or you can do it the hard way.

Here is the hard way. First, you have to decide on the overall layout. Do you want a header or not. Most sites you have seen have headers but how do you create one. You open Photoshop and start to play with some shapes, colors, find some clip-art and when you are all done you have something that doesn't really look very professional, and it took you all day to create.

Now you have to think about the rest of the layout. You know you need a headline, but how big should you make it? What color should you make it? How big should your sub-headline be? What color should that be? You spend about three hours playing back and forth with sizes and colors and you finally think you have it.

Now you look at your other text. Your bullet points listing the benefits don't really have the impact you want. But you don't know how to add those big check marks that you see on other sites. You know your testimonials should be segregated in boxes with different backgrounds but you aren't sure how that works. You think it has something to do with tables but they don't seem to work right when you try to insert them. You look at the HTML code to see if the answer lies there, but you realize you may be in over your head.

That's the hard way, here is the easy way. Find a reputable graphic design shop that knows how to put a sales page together. Tell them what you want and how much you want to spend, they design the page, and you are done. While they were doing that, you spend all the time you would have spent trying to design your site, working on your marketing plans so that when your site goes live you are ready to drive traffic to it and generate sales.

If you choose the easy way, there are some things you should look for when hiring a graphic design group to do your work. There are lots of graphic designers that will create wonderful looking pages for you. The problem is, those wonderful pages won't sell anything. You need to find graphics professionals who are also sales professionals. That is much harder to do.

You want a graphics company that knows internet marketing. You want to find graphic designers that know how important headlines are, the importance of a good header, how sub-headlines work through the sales letter, how testimonials should be used and how they should be formatted. The graphic designers should know the flow of the sales page process from the attention grabbing headline all the way down to the prominent guarantee with the large guarantee badge to make sure the viewer doesn't miss it.

You also want a graphics group that won't cost you an arm and a leg. You don't want to mortgage your house just to have a website designed. Good graphic design groups should have some reasonable cost packages that you can use without breaking the bank. Sales page templates are a good example of a value priced solution. A good firm will be able to provide you with templates, optimized as sales pages, that you only have to cut and paste your text into.

You have two choices when it comes time to put your sales page together. You can spend a lot of time and effort on your own, get frustrated and end up with a less than professional looking site, or you can do it the easy way. Hire a good graphics group with internet marketing knowledge, and let them do it. Spend your time on marketing, which is how you make money and let someone else take care of the mechanics.

To find out how you can utilize graphics and design templates to enhance your online business, and get profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson-online-design.com

Use Ebay To Help Build Your List

The internet marketing mantra is "the money is in the list" There are all kinds of suggestions and strategies, courses and ebooks, videos and audios that will tell you the secrets to building a list.

Basically they all boil down to a common strategy, get targeted leads to visit your sign up page, otherwise known as a squeeze page, and get those leads to subscribe to your list. The trick is finding the targeted traffic and convincing them to visit your squeeze page.

A huge resource of traffic that is highly segregated into groups or niches, is often left out of the mix. A common marketing expression is fish where the fish are, which means go to where your target lead is hanging out. The biggest pool of fish in the internet world is Ebay. The great thing about the traffic on Ebay, they are already searching for things to buy.

Ebay is the largest marketplace in the world. Ebay says that during any given month, one third of all internet traffic goes to Ebay. There are millions of customers on Ebay every day just looking to spend money. Those customers are self segregating. With the Ebay category system, you can pretty much target in on almost any niche you can think of.

The person looking for watches is going to be browsing the watches category. The buyer looking for sunglasses will be in the sunglass category. The person looking for information products will be in the information product category.

If you are selling ebooks, it's the information product category that you should be interested in. Prospective buyers who are in essence looking for ebooks and are ready to buy. How much more of a targeted audience do you need?

This method does not have to be limited to ebooks, although they seem to work the best in terms of list building from Ebay. You can build a list from any category your product would fit into.

What you need to do is entice the buyers browsing your category to visit your website. Now Ebay does not let you link to any external sites from auction pages but Ebay does allow you to link to external sites from your About Me page. As part of your auction sales copy, suggest they visit your About Me page where they can learn about you and find out how to get a free report.

On your About Me page you can offer a free report or ebook or anything else you think would entice your buyers to click the link you have on you About Me page that will take them to your squeeze page. Now you have leveraged your Ebay traffic and converted it into your website traffic.

As I said you can do this for any category. If you are selling watches, you might give away a report on use and care of watches, or history of watchmaking, or any information related to watches that your customers might be interested in.

Even though any category can take advantage of this enormous traffic machine called Ebay, the ebook business seems to work the best. If you are selling information products you have another way to build your list in addition to using your About Me page.

You can sell ebooks at very low prices to entice customers to buy. Then when it is time to deliver the product, you can send them to a download page where you provide them with an extra bonus for subscribing to your list. Just another way to get targeted traffic on your list using the incredible traffic on Ebay.

As part of your overall strategy, you should include Ebay in your traffic generating system. Remember, you need to fish where the fish are and Ebay is the biggest pool of fish in the world.

To find out how you can INSTANTLY receive your own product, and follow a successful and highly profitable system to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.powersellerebookbusiness.com

6 Article Strategies To Energize Your Internet Marketing

One of the best ways to build targeted traffic is to use articles. Because articles are so flexible as to their uses, most savvy internet marketers utilize articles in multiple ways. Here are six ways to use articles.

1. Post to your blog

As it is almost a requirement for successful internet marketers to have blogs now, the first way to use your article is to post it to your blog. Not only does it give your article exposure but it adds fresh content to your blog. The fresher your blog content the better it will rank in the search engines and the more often you will get returning readers.

2. Post to Your Squidoo Page

One of the newer web 2.0 sites that many internet marketers are taking advantage of is Squidoo. It is almost like having another blog but it is more commercial. It is also a very heavily trafficked site. Posting your article here will, again provide your Squidoo lens with new content which will enhance your Squidoo traffic. You can even set up Squidoo to pull articles from your blog so if you post to your blog you will update both your blog and your Squidoo page all at once.

3. Submit To Article Directories

This is the most common use of articles. You submit your article to article directories which post your articles and make them available for anyone to read and use. The more directories you can post to the more links you will generate and the better the search engines will like it. There are many software packages and websites that will help automate submitting articles to multiple directories.

4. Post Your Article On Your Website

You can create another page for your main website and post your article there. If you include a link to the article from your index page, the search engines will find it fast. They will look at the new article as fresh content to the overall website. If you post enough articles, you can set up an article index page with links to each article and one link from the main web page to the article index.

5. Modify the Article Into a Press Release

You can make some small editing changes to your article to make it a little more newsy by adding a what, why, where component. You can then submit the revised article as a press release to PRweb and other online PR sites where they will be picked up by news organizations and reporters. PRs are one of the best ways to create traffic for your sites.

6. Mail the Article to Your Subscriber List

You can make an email out of the article and mail it to your list. You can enhance your relationship with your list by regularly providing them with good useful information that they are looking for. For long articles, you can break them into parts and make multiple emails out of them. You can also just email a link to your blog or website to the page where the article is posted. This helps get your subscribers to your site or blog.

Articles are one of the most useful marketing tools. There are so many ways you can use them. You can use one of the ways listed or you can use any combination of those listed or you can use all of those listed for each article. The more you can use quality articles the better your internet marketing will be.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow a successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

Find The Best Hosting Providers

It's time to relieve yourself of any worries that have arrived due to the info you read on the Internet about the worries dealing with selecting a web hosting provider. You should be spending far more time worrying about learning and perfecting your business that you will be running online.

Of course, there are plenty of poor web hosting companies. However, an experienced web masters has the proper questions in place and can easily find a quality web host. Now, let's go take a deeper look in the world of hosting, and see what secrets we can uncover.

Normally, a web hosting review will spend time showing you the difference between a $5 shared hosting account and a $10 shared hosting account. But, we aren't going to waste your time by focusing on a $5 a month difference.

After all, if that's a concern for your online business, it may be time to rethink your strategy. The easiest way to find a quality web host is to ask people that have used them. Luckily for you, there are forums and news groups that are devoted to this topic. Just take a minute and look through news groups and forums and you will see the companies that show up repeatedly.

Pay close attention to when the information was posted. Try to find the most recent reviews. Things do change. Try to evaluate the source of the information. Was it a user trying to get a $200 hosting account for $5 and then complained when they didn't get it? Is it a web savvy individual?

Remember, customers are quick to complain when they don't get what they want. And, it's easy to not get what you want when you are expecting a Harvard education for a city college price.

Let's not waste any time going over storage size or bandwidth, which is what you will normally find in a hosting review. Fact is, you will only use a small fraction of either your space or bandwidth, so don't worry. Most hosting companies offer so much space that it is a mute point.

So, what should we focus on? Things that can actually help your business succeed. In lieu of comparing variables that we don't really need or use, like bandwidth, we are going to compare resources that actually can help you.

You want to find a hosting company that provides the tools most important to you. If you are a new web master, you may want an easy to use site builder. On the other hand, you may want a minimum number of databases. Other features like forums, blogs, shopping carts, and other scripts are probably far more important to you.

If you are working with someone else that will develop your site, speak to them about what you should look for. How a site is developed will determine its needs. In some cases you'll want a host that offers .NET, and in others you will want PHP. You may need a specific CMS which is only available at specific hosts.

But, most importantly is to have high quality, quick responding tech support. You want to be able to reach someone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Learn more about dedicated hosting at http://www.ourdedicatedhosting.com/

Make Your Sales Page Convert Better With Graphics

Your sales page, the most important piece of your internet marketing system. It can make you or break you. You can have the most traffic of any site on the internet, but if you have a sales page that does not convert any of your visitors into buyers, all that traffic is for naught. You always need to work on your sales page to make it convert the maximum number of visitors that it can. The proper graphics can make a big difference.

The first thing your sales page must do is convince your prospective customer that you are legitimate. No one is going to lay down their hard earned money on something that looks like it is being sold by a fly by night operation. A well designed sales page, with the right amount of graphics in the right places will make your site and ultimately you look professional

The second thing graphics can do on your sales page is to brand you. If part of your goal is to brand yourself or brand your product as a leading product in a niche, then you will want to have a header that portrays that.

Have you seen many of the sites of the very successful and famous internet marketers? They all have headers that help to define them and their product. Many times the header uses a photo of them. Their goal is to make sure that everyone identifies them as the expert in their niche.

Another function that graphics can provide is to help you define the points that you want your customers to see. For example, if you have a list of benefits, a large graphic check mark next to each benefit will help to draw your customer to each point. If you just have the usual dot to identify your bullet point, some important information, vital to your sales pitch, might be missed.

Graphics can help your customer find your guarantee. A large Guarantee Medallion on your sales page drives the customer's attention right to your guarantee, which is always an important part of getting the sale. The graphic makes it harder for you prospect to overlook this.

One final graphic may be the most important of all. The sales button. One thing they always say is you have to ask for the sale. You have to tell the customer to buy. A large graphic button that says "BUY NOW:CLICK HERE!" is much more effective than the text that says "click the link below to make your purchase".

The sales button screams out "YOU HAVE TO BUY NOW" The text says maybe you should buy if you think you like the product. The graphic BUY NOW button will induce your customer to take action now!

Your sales page is the most important web page you have in your online selling system. The goal of the sales page is to convert as many visitors as possible into buying customers. Anything you can do that will help your conversion rate must be incorporated into the sales page. If you know the right graphics to use and how to use them they can vastly improve your sales page effectiveness.

To find out how you can utilize graphics and design templates to enhance your online business, and get profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson-online-design.com

5 Important Rules in Website Design

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like welcome or click here to enter. In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they are not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

Web design is more of an art than a science so dont get frustrated if you do not achieve great results at first. The visitors will come with hard work and persistence. Web traffic comes to the deserving somtimes unexpectedly. Stick with the goals and you will have the success you desire.

Scott Johns conducts research and analysis of stock market picks and trends. To check out some of his company's latest picks go to http://thequarry.net

PCI DSS Compliance

Organizations that process credit card payments are subject to fraud, hacking and many other security threats and vulnerabilities. Any company that processes, stores, or transmits credit card numbers must be PCI Compliant or else risks losing its rights and abilities to process credit card payments of any type. Merchants are required to validate compliance via audits by PCI DSS Qualified Security Assessment (QSA) Companies.

PCI DSS, which stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard was developed by major credit card companies to protect themselves, their clients, and the businesses and organizations that use their cards.

PCI DSS began, originally, as five separate programs operating individually through MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, and JCB to protect data security and to create an additional level of protection for customers by ensuring that merchants meet minimum security levels when they process, store, and transmit cardholder data.

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council was formed in 2004 when these companies aligned their individual policies and created the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. PCI is considered to be one of the more comprehensive standards of data security. It is regarded as being relatively more prescriptive than other similar laws.

PCI Compliance Requirements in Small Business

PCI Compliance is a necessary requirement for all businesses that use credit card machines or process and store credit care information of any sort. This can be quite difficult for many small to medium size business due to the time, money and technical aspects involved. In house efforts for small businesses to become PCI compliant can take up to 18 months and cost upwards of $40,000. Furthermore, hardware and software upgrades could add additional thousands of dollars in order to maintain a safe and secure set of processes.

PCI DSS compliance addresses two crucial components: safe storage and protected payments. Any business that stores or processes any credit card information is required to safely store any and all information it gathers. Remote storage solutions are ideal because they ensure that credit card information is stored separately from other financial information that could be compromised.

Another important factor in PCI DSS compliance is a company's ability to securely send and receive credit card information online and via the phone. When collecting information online, it would be ideal for the customer to remain on a business's secure website and not redirected to an external site. This could compromise information and cause a major security risk.

Updating a small business' systems to comply with PCI DSS regulations can be quite expensive and tiresome; there are alternatives for small to medium sized businesses however.

There are companies available that are PCI DSS experts, and provide PCI compliance solutions for companies around the country. Generally speaking, these companies can get a company within the ranks of PCI compliance within 30 days for relatively low cost -- allowing SMB owners to focus on the day to day operations of their business and not alleviating the burden of becoming PCI compliant.

Whether you choose to meet PCI compliancy in house, or outsource that duty to a specialist company, it is a critical to meet compliance and remain compliant to PCI DSS regulations.

Art Gib writes for Brain Tree Payment Solutions (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/pci-compliance.php), a PCI compliance company that focuses on helping businesses attain and maintain PCI compliance.

Search Engine Optimization: What Online Business Owners Need to Know

Search engine optimization is a calculated process designed to make your website search engine friendly. It also strives to increase your website's ranking for a given set of keywords on a search engine results page. Higher rankings equal more visitors to your website.

Search engine optimization includes both organic search results and pay-per-click ad campaigns. Organic results are the rankings given to a website for different keywords based solely on your website's relevance to the keyword phrase entered. Pay-per-click is a paid sponsorship for chosen keywords. A full-service SEO company will handle both aspects of search engine rankings.

An SEO company will also recreate a website to make it user-friendly. If a website is difficult to navigate or holds no real informational value, visitors will not return and search engines will not find your website worthy of higher ranking.
An SEO company will focus on your website's

*Content

*HTML, including meta tags, title and internal links

*Inbound links and the accompanying anchor text

*Outbound links to other relevant websites

*Search engine-friendly site map

*Pay-per-click ad campaign

*RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed capability

*Selected keywords

*Blog development

*Keyword density and placement

*Content frequency

*Website graphics and 'alt' tags

*Sales copy

*Relevant content creation

It is possible for website owners to perform SEO for their own website if they are willing to invest the time required to learn the principles, write the HTML and revise the website. Link building alone can be a complex process, but with enough determination, individual business owners can do it. Quality information about SEO is available on the Internet for those willing to learn. Most online business owners opt for hiring an SEO company to manage their websites' rankings and development. The process may be costly initially, but the increased profit levels that result from higher rankings will pay for the service as long as the company is selling a quality product or service. Public demand must be present for a product or service to sell. Even the best sales copy cannot provide a sustained profit from a poor product or service.

Choosing a reputable SEO company can be challenging. Be sure to research the company, check with former and current clients if possible and ask to speak with a company representative before agreeing to a partnership. A solid SEO company will have client testimonials, professional recommendations and a money-back guarantee. Be sure to understand all aspects of the agreement and what will be expected of you in the SEO process before signing up. Ask about billing procedures and the company's privacy policy as well. You don't want your website or you e-mail address ending up on a third-party spammer's list.

Choose your company carefully and stay informed during the SEO process. Investing in a quality SEO company is money well spent on your online business.

Mike has been online since 2004. He can show you 3 steps to build your downline in any program. http://www.profit-unlimited.com/info/l/dls2_one
Mike can also introduce you to the #1 Home-Based Online Business. Click the following link and confirm the email. mailto:sfi_prospect@getresponse.com

Always Remember Your Website's Specific Purpose

Many internet marketers that are trying to be successful, end up not being successful because they forget the reason for their website. Your website is there for two and only two purposes. You want your visitor to either buy something or sign up for your list by providing their email and name.

Too many online marketers get caught up in the design of their site. They want it to look pretty. They want it to have cool Java scripts with fading pictures and fonts in all different sizes and color. The purpose of the site is to give your prospect one choice, not try and dazzle the visitor.

The more bells and whistles your site has the less chance your visitor will buy. Testing has shown unequivocally that the most effective website is a simple sales letter one page website.

The second mistake a lot of internet marketers make is to offer too many choices. They mistakenly believe if they put a variety of ebooks, or a number of any other products on their site, they will sell more because the consumer will have more choices.

This couldn't be further from the truth. The fact is, the more choices you give a prospect the less chance they will buy. You want to make sure your prospect has only two choices, buy the product or leave. It is black and white decision. There is no in between.

A simple sales letter as the main part of your website is the most effective sales mechanism. With the technology today audio and video are effective ways to enhance your sales letter. It still comes down to the sales letter. Your sales letter must focus on selling one product and one product only.

If you have 12 products to sell, rather than try and sell all 12 of them from your website, the effective way to do that is to sell them one at a time to your list.

The only time you should not have a sales letter as the main page is if you are only trying to convince your visitor to sign up for your list. This is generally known as a squeeze page as you are trying to squeeze the information from your visitor.

In this case you want a very short message which provides the prospect with a reason to leave his email and name information. The squeeze page should not be any longer than what fits on one screen.

The only goal that a squeeze page has is to collect some information. Nothing else. This should be the only option given the visitor. Either they leave their information or they don't. Again a pure black and white decision.

Remember the cardinal rule of direct marketing. Only give your prospect one and only one decision to make. Buy your product or leave your site. Leave their email and name or leave your site. Always remember your website's purpose. If you do, and you utilize the two websites, the sales letter site selling one product and the squeeze page site only asking for information, you will be a successful internet marketer.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow a successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

Wiki Search and the One Trick Pony

Google is a "one-trick pony" Those were the words of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in March of 2007 to students at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.

While Ballmer did give some props to Google for hitting the 10 billion dollar revenue mark faster than Microsoft he also stated "They're really just one business, a search and advertising business."

That one business by the end of 2007 was doing what it did best; dominating the search market. According to statistics compiled by comScore, The Google market share was over 58% in the U.S. Internationally it's 69%. The nearest competitor Yahoo sits at 23%. With those numbers it doesn't look like much room for anybody else.

Enter Jimmy Wales. With the emergence of Web 2.0 changing the way we communicate, Wales is betting that the time is right for a search engine that like Wikipedia allows volunteers to collaborate online. Wales also hopes that the new WikiSearch "reduces the sort of bottleneck of two or three firms controlling the flow of search traffic."

That's going to be a tall order. As Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence told the Financial Post, "He's aligning himself with the people of Wikipedia versus the Death Star that Google is".

Wales has no illusion that he will overtake Google any time soon. Instead he believes that getting about 5% of the market will be enough to sustain Wiki Search.

While that number seems like a modest goal there are more than a few observers who think Wales could be out of his league this time. "I think he doesn't really understand the scale of what Google has to handle", says Danny Sullivan editor and chief of Search Engine Land. When you consider that Wiki Search will have somewhere between 50 to 100 million web pages indexed upon launch compared to the billions indexed by Google, Yahoo and MSN, you can see Sullivan's point.

But Wales has a couple of things going for him.

1. Not Google
Shrewd business decisions combined with phenomenal growth in a relatively short period of time has made Google arguably the central player on the internet. This status has also created a sizable audience which has no interest in seeing Google become the only game in town. From Greg Sterling, "Any time a company becomes as successful or as dominant as Google has become, there's a resistance or backlash and that creates hunger for alternative."

You can bet with the start of Google Aps (similar to Microsoft Office and another way Google plans to shed the one trick pony label), concerns about their privacy policy and other issues, that the "anybody but Google" crowd will continue to grow. Wiki Search may benefit greatly from these developments.

2. The Social Scene
Wales is also riding a wave that is in the process of changing the internet landscape. Social networking, media and bookmarking represent a fundamental shift in how information is communicated. The emergence of Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, video and blogging, among other things, guarantees there is no going backwards. New technology will only improve the interactivity between users which may give Wales more than his hoped for 5% market share.

No can predict the future. Many would be competitors have made a run at Google. Many are no longer in business. However the incredible success of Wikipedia, combined with anti Google backlash and the online social revolution may be putting Wales in a better position than any of his predecessors.

Whether Wiki search succeeds is unclear. What is clear is that communication and doing business online will never be the same thanks to Web 2.0. Find out more at The Internet Marketing Guide http://winthemarket.com

The Top 4 Mistakes Made By Internet Marketing Newbies And How To Avoid Them

If you are new to internet marketing you may find yourself a little overwhelmed. There is so much to learn, but there are 4 mistakes that are the biggest barriers to online success. If you can learn to avoid them you will succeed online, because the rest will work itself out.

Internet Marketing Mistake #1: FAILURE TO TAKE ACTION

The number one reason that new internet marketers don't succeed is that they never get started. To succeed in internet marketing you need to take action. It almost doesn't matter what action as long as you actually start something and follow through on it.

If you don't put your product on a website, you won't sell it no matter how much you have learned. If you don't find some product to sell, you won't succeed no matter how much you know about product creation or affiliate marketing. The point is if you do nothing, you will gain nothing. Take action!

Internet Marketing Mistake #2: TRYING TO BE PERFECT

Another major mistake new internet marketers make is they try to be perfect. Just a few more tweaks of the site and then it will be perfect. Just a few more, just this little adjustment, you can go on and on. Nothing you do will ever be absolutely perfect. If you wait until you think your product is perfect or you wait until your website is perfect you will always be waiting.

Nothing is perfect, but it doesn't have to be perfect. Does it do the job it is supposed to do? Does it look like it will sell a product? Then that's good enough to start with. Trying to be perfect is really another way of procrastinating. Get it going. You can improve the product or the website or anything else as you go along. Nothing happens until you finally decide to move ahead.

Internet Marketing Mistake #3: AFRAID YOU DON'T KNOW ENOUGH YET

Many new internet marketers don't ever get started because they think they need to know everything before they start. They buy every course and every ebook they can get their hands on. They study and read and study and read, but that is all they ever do. You will never know everything there is to know about internet marketing. Learning is an ongoing process. You will learn more by doing than you ever will learn from a course or a book. Just start and the knowledge will come.

Internet Marketing Mistake #4: AFRAID OF FAILURE

This may be the mistake that holds more new internet marketers back more than any other mistake. They are afraid if they market their product it will be a failure, so they never market it. How can you know something will be a failure before you try? If you don't try it's guaranteed you will fail.

New internet marketers, heck even great internet marketers fail alot. But there is no such thing as failure. All failure means is the next time you need to make some changes. It was failure that ultimately taught every internet marketer how to really market. Failure allowed them to find out what didn't work so the next time they could do different things that would work.

If you are aware of the 4 mistakes that most new internet marketers make, then you are already ahead of the curve. Don't fall into those traps.

Get started, don't try and be perfect, don't worry about how much you don't know and don't be afraid of failure. If you can do those things avoiding the 4 mistakes, you will be on your way to online success.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow a successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

What Is Clickbank Gravity And How Does It Help You As An Affiliate?

One of the easiest ways to get started marketing on the internet is through affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is sending leads to a sales page and getting paid for everyone of your leads that buy. But how do you select an affiliate product? How can you tell which affiliate products will sell and which won't sell?

The process of choosing an affiliate program to become involved with is not as hard as it may seem as long as you know what to look for and what you want. You need to know how to search for affiliate programs and how to compare one to another.

The first thing you need to know before you pick an affiliate program is what market or what niche do you want to sell in. For example do you want to sell internet marketing information, self help information or gardening information?

There are so many products you can sell, you need to narrow you choice to start with by answering that question. You will be most likely to succeed in an area you either know something about or are interested in.

Once you pick your niche you are ready to start looking. The largest collection of information products with affiliate programs is Clickbank. There are thousands of products in dozens of categories and hundreds of sub categories listed for affiliates to choose from.

Go to Clickbank and look around a little bit to get a feel for the site and read some of the information about getting started. If you do not have a Clickbank account, you need to sign up for one. It is through this account that you will be paid, so it is important to sign up.

Once that is done go to Clickbank marketplace. There is a link to marketplace at the top of the main page. Marketplace is where you can search for affiliate programs. They are organized by categories which is why you need to have an idea about the market or niche you want to sell to ahead of time.

There is a simple search engine there that will allow you to search by category, keyword, and sub-category. Once you enter the search parameters the system lists your results. There are some statistics that are shown for all each of the results. The key ones are gravity, total earned per sale, percent earned per sale and percent of sales by affiliates.

The most important number is gravity. Gravity is a score that Clickbank assigns to each affiliate product according to their secret formula. It has to do with how many sales and how recently those sales have occurred.

Suffice to say that high gravity means that affiliates are making a lot of commissions on sales. Low gravity means that there has not been many sales at all. So the gravity is an important measure of how successful a product is.

You do not want to select the product with highest gravity because that also means that there will be the highest number of competitors selling that product. It would be very difficult for you start with a product that has so much competition.

You would be much better off looking for a product with a gravity somewhere between 75 and 150. That way you know that the product sells fairly well and you won't have as much competition as the top products will have.

Once you find a number of products you might be interested in based on the gravity and category you can then start looking at the other factors such as total paid and percent paid. Always start with a good number of possibilities and narrow it down from there.

You can be more confident in picking the right affiliate product by understanding how to use the gravity numbers at Clickbank. That is a great start to picking your winning affiliate product.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow a successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics

If you have a website, your goal is to get as much traffic to your website that you can. In order to do that without emptying your bank account you need to rank high in the search engines. To succeed with that goal, you need to learn a few basics of SEO.

The art of creating web pages that will rank well is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short. If you ask a dozen SEO experts to list their top 10 SEO tips you will get 12 different lists. There are a few basics, though, that most SEO experts agree on.

SEO revolves around optimizing your webpage for keywords. That means the number one thing you need to do to optimize your page is to find the correct keywords. It would be a lot of wasted time and effort if you optimized your site for some specific keywords, only to find out later that there were much better keywords you should have used.

Once you find your keywords, you are ready to start optimizing your site. The most important area of the site to optimize is the title. The title of your site is what will show up in the search engine results for your keyword. That means not only does it need to include your keywords, but it needs to be compelling enough or direct enough for someone to click on it when they see it.

The next area of optimization, META tags, is one that there are many disagreements about. META tags are tags put into the header of the html code of your website that is only there for the search engines to read. They are not visible anywhere on the site to your visitor.

The one META tag that is agreed upon, is the description META tag. This description should have your keywords in it, preferably at or near the beginning. It should be an accurate and concise description of your site. This description will often be part of the search engine results, listed right under your title.

There is another META tag that is debated as to it's current importance to the engines. That is the keyword META tag. I would include it. It doesn't hurt and many search engines still use it. This tag is where you list your keywords.

One thing you need to be careful of is spamming the search engines with keywords. Use keywords but only as they make sense in communicating your message. Don't use keywords more than once in the title and not more than three times in the description.

The next area of your website that should have keywords incorporated are your headlines and your sub headlines. Now here is where an SEO expert might not have the best advice for a sales oriented site. If possible you should incorporate your keywords in the headline and the sub headlines. But there is one caution.

Remember that your headline is the most important sales statement on your page. It is your headline that will determine whether your lead stays to read your page or clicks away. While you want to have a headline that is keyword rich, you don't want to compromise the effectiveness of the headline to capture your lead's attention. Utilize keywords in your headings as much as you can but don't try to put too many keywords in so you loose the effectiveness of your headline.

The final basic principle of SEO is to make sure keywords are used through out the site in the body text. Again don't spam the text with keywords. In most cases if your content is on your keyword subject, the keywords will end up in the text naturally.

SEO is not an exact science. There are many opinions on how to best optimize your site. The basics of having the proper keywords and optimizing the title, Meta description, headlines and body will put you ahead of most of your competitors.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow a successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

Internet Marketing And Squidoo: An Overview

More and more internet marketing is adapting to the new Web 2.0 environment. This adapt ion requires new ways of marketing online. Blogs is one of the new marketing methods. A blog like entity called Squidoo is another.

First let me back pedal slightly and make sure you know what Web 2.0 is. Web 2.0 is the phrase coined to describe the new, changing character of the web. This new web can be described as user contributed content. In other words, initially most websites were read only sites. now there is more user interaction.

Web 2.0 can be also be described as the networking of communities on the web. The communities revolve around common interests. As a result of the emergence of Web 2.0 new sites, and new tools have evolved to facilitate user interaction. One of those sites is Squidoo.

Squidoo is a large site that encourages users to set up a page for any information they may want to share with the rest of web community. There are pages set with individual bios, there are pages for issues that are important to the page creator, there are pages set up for just about anything.

Unlike many other sites, Squidoo encourages promotion of your business. Squidoo is a for profit entity so they know that business promotion will help them reach their potential. The only rule in promoting your business or product or website is, you can not just put up ads. You must put up content that is interesting and useful to your niche.

Along with the content, of course you can create links to get them to the sites you are targeting, which is part of how you market on Squidoo. If you have a blog, it is easy to add an RSS feed to your Squidoo page so that whenever you update your blog, you also add fresh content to your Squidoo page. In fact you can set it up so that if the reader wants to read more, they end up on your blog.

Pages on Squidoo are called lenses instead of pages. Webmasters on Squidoo are called lensmasters. Squidoo is absolutely free. There is no cost no matter how many pages or lenses you set up.

Another feature of your Squidoo page is that you can set up, through their easy to use module system, Amazon sales blocks, eBay sales blocks and other affiliate programs that you will get paid for if sales are made through your lens.

Additionally, Google adsense ads are inserted in your page automatically and you get paid for those clicks. There is the ability to get your page listed on some of the social bookmarking sites like Digg, Del.ico.us, and others. Readers can rate your lens and add it to their favorites or recommend it and email it to their friends.

So what are the benefits of setting up lenses on Squidoo. First, it is a very popular site. There is a lot of traffic so it is one more place where you can expose potential customers to your products. Second, it is another place the search engines can find links back to your product site or blog. Third, you can set up as many lenses as you want at no charge.

You can set up 20 or 30 lenses, each on a different product or each on a different aspect of the same product. You just can't spam the site though. As I indicated earlier, you need to have good useful content on all your lenses. But if you can get 20 or 30 pages on Sqidoo all pointing back to your blog or your product page, think what that will do to your search engine rank.

Finally, as you market your products on Squidoo, you can earn money from all of the ads on your lenses. You can also get paid to get new sign ups.

Squidoo is a very good marketing tool for any internet marketer. It's takes no effort to set up, it can have self updating content and you can make some money right off the page. Squidoo is one more way you can take advantage of Web 2.0 as part of your internet marketing strategy.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow a successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

Social Bookmarking: Another New Internet Marketing Tool

Web 2.0, the ability of the user to contribute content and share information with other users, is adding new methods and strategies to effective internet marketing. Effective internet marketing in this environment is dependent upon having the users get excited about your product or content and want to share it with others. The fastest way this is done is something called social bookmarking.

You know how to add a site to your favorites list, right? You see a site that you like or that you plan to return to so you add it to your favorites list. There is one big drawback to this "old" system of listing your favorite sites. Your favorites list is locked onto your computer. There is no easy way to share your favorites list with your friends and associates.

What if, when you found a site you wanted to add to your favorites, instead of adding them to your favorites on your computer, you could add them to a list of your favorites that is on the internet. Then you could find your favorites no matter what computer you were using and you could direct your friends to your favorites list by sharing the web address with them.

This is in essence what social bookmarking is. Social bookmarking is creating a personalized list of your favorites on an internet site built specifically for this purpose. The site is constructed so that everyone who visits can see your favorites list and can visit the sites that you think are important.

Visitors to your social bookmark list not only can visit your favorite sites, they can add the sites that they like to their own social bookmark list. Then others can view their list and so on and so forth. A really interesting site could start to spread virally on these social bookmarking sites. That would be a tremendous benefit to anyone's web traffic.

Another function of social bookmarking sites is to keep track of how many times a site is listed on someone's favorites list. This number is used to rank the sites popularity. Of course the highest ranking sites are featured by the social bookmarking sites and of course that brings even more traffic to those sites.

How do you start getting listed on these social bookmarking sites? First you have to be listed at least once, so logically you set up your own list and put your sites on it. Some sites have buttons you can add to your site to allow readers the option of listing it on their social bookmark list. There are plugins for some blogs that can do this. Obviously the better and more useful your content the more likely your site is going to end up on readers lists.

The object is to get your site listed on as many social bookmark sites and lists as you can. A few popular sites are: del.ico-us, backflip, netvouz, Digg and stumbleupon.

Getting involved in social bookmarking is good internet marketing, taking advantage of the interactivity of Web 2.0. Social bookmarking is one more tool to use to boost your sites popularity and increase traffic.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow a successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

PCI Data Security: The Standard that Raised the Bar

When consumers offer their bank or credit card over the Internet, phone or from some point of sale somewhere, it's usually never a second thought for someone to wonder if that data is safe or not. Well, if it weren't for standards that credit card companies and merchants adhere to, information could be hanging out there for any cyber thief to try their hand at grabbing.

Every credit card agency has its own unique standard on how transaction and personal data is handled. From MasterCard to Visa they all touch on similar aspects of how to maintain card data properly, from merchant to card agency.

Since then big stories on the tech news circuit came about in regards to card numbers being stolen from agencies and merchants alike. In light of this type of news, the big names in the Credit Card industry coalesced their security knowledge and have come up with the standard rules, a reference for all of those involved in the transaction called the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

How to be PCI Compliant

Credit card data is transmitted, stored and processed so there are a variety points where hackers try to interfere with the process to leak information. PCI Security Standards Organization laid out 12 main points for all the card data handlers to adhere to become PCI DSS compliant:

- Regular testing of their security systems and processes
- Create and maintain an in-house policy for addressing security issues
- Restrict physical access to credit card data and owner's information
- Have a tracking system to monitor all access to the network and credit card data
- Those who have access maintain and use an unique ID
- Keep a policy that restricts access to only a need-to-know basis
- Routinely run up to date antivirus software
- Maintain a sound secure system and application software
- Encrypt cardholder data and sensitive information across the network
- Protect data that is stored
- Create own system passwords, never use the network software's defaults
- Maintain a sound firewall

Any company that accepts, processes, or stores credit card information becomes PCI DSS compliant based on the number of transaction they process a year.

There are four levels of degrees that the industry distinguishes. For a point of reference, level one processors run 6 million or more transactions a year, while a level four would transact under 20,000. All must maintain compliance or risk heavy fines if there is a breach in their data control.

Art Gib writes for Brain Tree Payment Solutions (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com) who offer payment processing services to many major companies. Braintree Payment Solutions offers a suite of payment processing services that adhere to PCI DSS compliance.

Shopping With Credit Cards And Store Cards

Credit cards and store cards are plentiful in modern society, so much so that it is probably easier than ever to get goods on credit. The buy now, pay later culture is certainly convenient, but is it a wise idea, considering its obvious correlation with debt? Further than that, credit cards can be a great way to save money on your purchases provided you spend wisely. When dealing with credit and store cards, strong financial management is certainly paramount to avoid spiralling debts and borrowing costs when shopping on credit.

Wherever you shop you'll be able to buy in cash or on credit. It really is that widespread these days. Whether the credit is provided by the storekeeper or the card company, you won't have to pay a penny up front, which means you can plan your expenditure in advance. However, you will eventually have to repay everything you borrow, plus interest, so it's always a good idea to make sure you can afford it. This only comes with successful budgeting. Knowing exactly what you've got coming in and going out is paramount in ensuring you keep on top of your financial situation, and store cards and credit cards can be a great help to immediately pick up that shopping bill.

With your store cards and credit cards, you should always keep your bills and receipts, and match them up regularly to make sure everything is present and correct. This can be a great way to prevent against credit card fraud, and can help protect your funds from being pilfered. When you get the bill through at the end of the month, make sure you have the money to pay it off. One months credit is cheaper than ten months credit, so if you can pay it off, do so - it'll save you money in the long run. If you can't pay it off in full, you should still try to contribute as much as possible to get rid of some of your debt, which will again save you money on the high interest repayments demanded by card companies.

Shopping on credit is great, because it's easy and worry-free. The only problem comes when it's time to pay back what you've borrowed. As long as you make sure you're on top of your finances and pay off as much as you can afford come the end of the month, you'll find credit cards are actually helpful, rather than causing problems.

Jonathon Hardcastle writes articles for http://allkindsofclothing.com/ - In addition, Jonathon also writes articles for http://supershoppingtips.com/ and http://1stconsumerinfo.com/

Internet Marketing In Minutes With Blogs And PLR

There are many different ways to use a blog for internet marketing. Some blogging methods help drive traffic to your site. Some blog strategies drive traffic to an affiliate site. Instead of sending traffic from your blog to somewhere else, you can actually use your blog as your main site. Couple that with a PLR product you can sell and you can be up and running as an online marketer in minutes.

First let's make sure you know what PLR products are. PLR is short for Private Label Rights. Private label rights describes how you can use a product you have purchased to resell. Private label rights products have much more leeway on how you can use them than anything other than your own product.

Private label rights usually means you can literally treat the product as your own. The main difference between your own product and PLR products is, you own the copyright on your own product but you cannot claim copyright on the PLR product as it is.

PLR means that you can put your name on it as the author or publisher, and you can add to it and change it. You can also change the format. If it is an ebook, you can make an audio out of it for example. Once you change the product enough, then you can claim copyright to the new changed product.

Let's assume, you have your PLR product and now you are ready to market it. While there are a number of ways to do that, having your own site is likely the best way. The biggest obstacle to that is, setting up your own site can be a daunting project. Blogs have changed all that.

It takes very little effort to set up a blog. If you are willing to have a URL that includes wordpress.com or blogger.com, you can set up a blog and be on the internet with your product in minutes. You can go to Wordpess or Blogger and fill in a few blanks, upload or type a post and you have your own site online.

You can set up your blog on your own domain if you like also. It is a little more complicated but great directions are provided. Having it on your own domain gives you more control.

Now that you have your site ready to go, you can start marketing your PLR product right away. You can create a sales letter and copy it into your blog as a post. Next format it in the WYSIWYG editor, upload a picture or graphic and you have your own website with a sales page for your PLR product.

You can make other posts to enhance your sales letter. You might create a post with testimonials. You could create a post copying a small sample of the product if it is an information product. You could post snipits of advice from the product. You could post articles on the product topic.

The thing with blogs is, every time you add a new post, your blog can ping directories to let them know there is a new post. The more new posts the more pings and the more times the directories will hear from your blog. You can also do conventional marketing including pay per click advertising sending them to your blog sales page so they can buy.

PLR products give you the opportunity to have your own product without having to create one. Blogs give you the opportunity to have your own web site without having to create one. Put them together and you have a quick and easy way to jump into internet marketing in a matter of minutes.

To find out how you can INSTANTLY receive your own product, and follow a successful and highly profitable system to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ezsellebooks.com

PLR, MRR And RR Explained!

There are a myriad of products on the internet that you can purchase and sell as your product. Some of them are labeled PLR, some are labeled MRR and some are labeled RR. What do those initials stand for, what is the difference between them and how does that affect your internet marketing?

PLR, MRR and RR all stand for particular licensing rights to products you can buy to resell. PLR stands for private label rights. MRR stands for master resell rights, and RR stands for resale rights.

In some ways they are the same but in important ways they are very different. If you don't know the difference and resell a product incorrectly you could find yourself in trouble with the product creator, or at least the creators lawyers. Let me explain how they each work.

Let's start with the product type that has the most restrictions on it and work our way up to the type that has the least restrictions. The products labeled RR are the most restrictive. Those are the products that are designated resale rights.

Resale rights products, are products that you purchase that you have the right to resell to others to make a profit. The only thing you are allowed to do is to resell the product to the end user. You can not change it in any way, you can not claim authorship or copyright to the product.

Resell rights products can be sold by you to someone who wants to use the product for themselves. They cannot resell the products themselves. You do not have the right to offer any one else the ability to sell that product.

That brings us to the next type of product on the totem pole, MRR or master resell rights products. Master resell rights products are similar to RR products in that you cannot change the product or claim authorship or copyright to the product.

Although you have the right to sell it to the end user just like RR labeled products here is where it is different, you can sell resell rights to the product. You have the right to enable a customer to purchase the product with the ability of that customer to resell it themselves. That is the difference between MRR and RR. MRR means you can sell resell rights to the product you are marketing, RR means you cannot sell resell rights, you can only sell the product to the end user.

That leaves PLR, the best option for a product you want to resell. A product labeled PLR or private label rights, can literally be treated as if you created it yourself. You can put your name on it as the author. You can sell resell rights and master resell rights to the product. The only thing you cannot do is claim copyright to the product even though you can claim authorship.

Another difference with PLR products is that you can change and edit them. You can add comments, rewrite parts, even rewrite the whole thing. You can change formats, for example you can convert an ebook into an audio product by reading it into a recorder. Once you change the product significantly, it in essence becomes a new product and now you can claim copyright to the new changed product.

I must throw one caveat in here, make sure you understand exactly what you are buying. While I have outlined what is generally accepted to be the difference between these types of products, product creators may have their own definition of what they are selling. Make sure you look specifically at how the product creator will let you use the product.

Buying products online for resale is a quick and usually inexpensive way to quickly get your hands on a product to market. Knowing the difference between PLR, MRR and RR gives you better knowledge about what you are buying. It also let's you know exactly how you can sell each of the product types so you can better know how to market your products.

To find out how you can INSTANTLY receive your copy of my Google.com No.1 Ranked eBusiness Guide with PLR rights visit Ray Johnson's:

http://www.ezsellebooks.com

Should Your Internet Marketing Blog Be On Their Site Or Your Site?

If you are contemplating setting up a blog to enhance your internet marketing, you need to know some of the basic choices you have. The biggest choice is to consider if you want to use a blog site as your host or if you want to host your own.

Hosting your blog on a blog site or hosting your own blog each has it's advantages and disadvantages. Knowing the differences and pros and cons of each will help you decide what is best for you.

If you are looking for the simplest solution in setting up your internet marketing blog, then hosting it on a blog site is you best option. You can have your blog set up in a matter of minutes ready to post to or upload content to.

The two most popular of the blog sites that will host your blog is Blogger.com and Wordpress.com. They are very comparable in terms of what they offer and how they work. Both have similar steps for set up.

All you need to do is work through a few screens that ask you a few questions about how you want your blog set up. The most difficult of those questions is what to call your blog. There are a number of different style templates you choose from that will determine exactly how your blog will look. Those can be changed easily anytime you want.

The biggest downside to hosting your blog on a blog site is that you don't have your domain url as your blog address. Your URL will be "your-blog-name/blogger.com" or "your-blog-name/wordpress.com". You will always have the blogs domain as part of your URL. Not as professional looking as having your own domain.

The other disadvantage of blogs hosted by blog sites is that you don't have a lot of control. You can change the formatting of the site according to a few dozen templates you can choose from. Other than that you are stuck with their designs.

You also have to live with the standard functions and options available on each site. You can not add your own options. You also have some restrictions you must comply with as to how you can utilize your blog.

If you want to host your own blog on your own domain, there are a few things you need. First, obviously you need your own domain. You also need a hosting server to install it on.

You can install it yourself if you like doing those kinds of things or you can have someone install it for you. One way or another you have to get it installed onto your hosting server.

Once you get by the installation, you're basically home free. Now you have a lot of advantages to hosting the blog yourself. You have total freedom to do to your blog anything you want.

There are hundreds of templates available to customize your self hosted blog almost any way you can imagine. You can also customize any of the templates you use. You might change the colors, or you might add your website header logo to the blog.

One of the biggest advantages is your URL will be your domain name. It might be "your-domain.com/blog" Another thing you can do is add different functions. There are hundreds of add on programs that just plug in to your blog.

You can change to a different WYSIWYG editor if you want, you can add a calander, you can add different options for your sidebars and more. There are even programs you can plug in that help maximize your search engine optimization.

It boils down to this. If you want the simplest and quickest way to implement your internet marketing blog, you should use the blog hosted type. It will be a little more restricting but you will have the comfort of an easy set up.

If you want more flexibility, customization, control and your own domain name then you should host your own blog. It will be a little more challenging setting up, but once it is up you can do almost anything you want with it.

Either choice you make will provide you with a good, usable blog. You will have one more tool to enhance your internet marketing.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow a successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked eSeller:

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

One Quick And Easy Way To Create Your Own Product

Internet marketing is based on someone selling a product. Unless you are an affiliate marketer selling other marketer's products, you must sell a product yourself. If you want to sell your own product, the problem becomes how to create your own product.

Creating your own product seems like a tremendous task. Product creation is what holds some would be online marketers back from getting started. Product creation can actually be much easier than you think. Here, I am going to outline a very simple way to create your own product.

A very easy way to create a product is to do some interviews. Not only is this easy, but it also underlines the fact that you don't have to be an expert in the field you are creating a product for, you just need to be able to find the experts.

To illustrate how this works, let's use an example. Suppose you wanted to create a product about golf. You are not an expert at golf, and you know your own game needs a lot of work, so how could you create a product about golf?

Even though you are not an expert, you know that every golf course in the area has an expert called a pro. All you need to do is get a digital recorder, and convince 5 or 6 area pro's to do an interview with you.

You might ask each pro to give some tips about different parts of the game. One pro can talk about putting, one about driving, one about chipping etc. Many experts will be happy to do interviews just to get their name out there. Others you may have to pay. One way or another, you can get experts to do interviews with you.

Once you have the interviews done, you put them together as a package. You many call it "Professional Golfers Tell You How To Play Better Golf", six hours of audio. You now have a product. If you market them individually instead of all together you have six products. The best part is, you didn't have to write any of it.

You can also take those audios and have them transcribed. Once you do that, in addition to the audio product now you have a written product. You can sell the audio as one product, the written transcripts as another product and sell them both together as a third product.

You can probably think of other ways to create products out of the information you gathered just with your interviews. You can see from this example how product creation is really easier than you thought. You can also see that you don't need to be the expert in order to create a product. You just need to be able to find the experts.

Are you ready to go out and create your own product now? Just pick your niche, find the experts, interview them and you have your product. It really is that easy. With your own product, you'll be on your way to online success.

To find out how you can successfully create your own highly profitable products without ever writing one word, visit Ray Johnson's - Google.com No.1 Ranked outsourcing site:

http://www.instantinfoguru.com

Blogs And Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a well known way to make money online. You pick a product, market that product, send leads to the product sales page and collect your commission. Sounds simple right?

Of course if you have ever tried affiliate marketing, you know that picking a product and collecting commission are the easy parts. The hard part is marketing the product. One of the decisions on marketing as an affiliate is: "should I have a website to market from?"

As an affiliate, you are reluctant to utilize a website. Websites can be complicated to set up. Websites take a lot of time to design and the links have to be set up and if you need to change the content you have to know HTML and FTP or you need to pay someone to do it. If you wish to sell another product you need another website.

Today's internet environment has lead to new ways to get an online prescence. Blogs are a tool you can use that is perfect for affiliate marketing. They are easy to set up, you don't need to be a programmer to do it and they come pre configured to do exactly what you need it too. The designs can be changed at the click of a mouse, so you can make it look however you like.

You can easily market any kind of affiliate product with a blog. It can be used with downloadable information products or with hard products or can also be used with affiliate programs like Amazon.

On your blog, post a review or a few words about the affiliate product, include your link and give them the opportunity to buy. You can make another post about the same product the next day or you can post another product. You can categorize the products so readers can quickly find the exact information they are looking for.

The great thing about using blogs is that new posts can be automatically posted to directories and search engines by having the blog notify them after each post. This is called pinging and it is built into most blogs.

Another advantage to using blogs is the ability to use RSS feeds. RSS feeds send new posts directly to RSS subcribers that sign up. They would get your message delivered right to their desktop.

Blogs also offer you the ability to add preconfigued plug-ins that can help you customize your site with all kinds of extra tools. There are a number of add-ons that can help optimize your blog for the search engines. Some can optimize your title tags. Some can even create a Google friendly site map.

Blogs enable you to optimize and enhance your affiliate marketing while giving you your own online presence. You can market any kind of affiliate poduct and any number of affiliate products on a customizable website that is easy to use and change. Your affiliate blog can be listed in the search engines and you can optimize it for those search engines.

Blogs are so well adapted to affiliate marketing, you will think they were developed specifially for that purpose. Using a blog can be an easy and inexpensive way to increase your success as an affiliate.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, follow successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, from Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked Internet Marketer.

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk

Electrical Retailers: Should I Buy Online or Offline?

Many questions have been asked about electrical retailers and their role in business, since the advent of the internet. Many consumers now go online to order their dish washers, washing machines, electric tooth brushes, fridges, cookers, tvs and other household appliances. It does not matter if it is a large domestic appliance or a small one, very often people are prepared to order on faith via a good online electrical shop.

The electical business is very competive and news reports during the year have shown many companies slashing prices of their "white goods" please note "white goods" is another name for household or domestic appliances.

Personally, although I do shop online; I tend to visit an electical shop before purchasing things like fridges etc. The reason for this is probably based on a story told to me by a dear friend. I asked this friend why he would spend 125 pounds (250 US dollars) on a bottle of wine when it is obviously 25 times the price of a bottle purchased online. His answer was interesting he said that he wasnt paying for the bottle of wine alone. He was in fact paying for the ambience, the location, the fine table clothes, the great service, privacy and discretion, the discerning style and absolute class and the time to associate and interact with the human race. Now it may be pushing it a bit to compare this experience to buying white goods, but I hope you get the point!

Just a couple of weeks ago I checked the prices of a dish washer. The best price I could find online was 259 pounds, This included installation. After a bit of bartering with the manager of the local electrical store I was able to secure the same for 279 pounds. Although the 20 pounds may have seemed a lot more. This is how I gained, We had some good fun in the store, chatting with the staff. We met up with some old friends and were able to catch up on old times.

After this my wife and I were able to have some quality time over a cup of coffee. When the dish washer appliance was delivered, about 2 hours later! The guys from the shop were able to nip back to the shop and pick up a particular electrical part to make our machine legal. Officially they were supposed to get an electrican in which for what they had to do would have been silly. So all in all, we had a good time felt special and most importantly did business with a local electrical retailer selling domestic appliances on a personal basis.

By the way, the manager also gave me his phone number to call if ever we had a problem or if we needed a washing machine or any other kitchen appliance. Beat that!

Shopping Online and it development such as electrical retailer http://www.electricalretailer.com
has intriqued Dr S for many years. Its exciting how this form of shopping http://www.electricalretailer.co.uk
will explode over the next few years. http://www.ecom21.co.uk

Blog Marketing: Why You Need To Know About RSS

As blogs became a larger and larger part of the internet, they have become a larger and larger part of internet marketing. One of the reasons they have become important to online business is because blogs offer unique tools as part of their structure. These tools can be beneficial in enhancing online marketing campaigns. One of these tools is RSS.

RSS has been around for a while. It was developed back in the mid to late 90's. It has only recently become a mainstream part of the internet. RSS, having gone through a number of different names using those initials, currently is popularly known as Real Simple Syndication. By now you are probably asking yourself, What is RSS and why is it important to me?

The best way to describe RSS is simply this, instead of your customer going to your website, the website content goes to them. RSS is a method of broadcasting your content to whomever signs up to get it.

For example, if someone is interested in gardening, they may want to read new articles on gardening. They go to a few gardening blogs and sign up to receive RSS feeds. Whenever there is a new posting on those blogs, those new postings will be sent to their computer. Now instead of having to navigate to those websites to see if there are any new posts, all they have to do is open their RSS reader or RSS enabled browser and see all the new content waiting for them.

RSS is important to know about if you want to use blogs as part of your internet marketing scheme because RSS is a tool built into all blogs. Blog software automatically is configured to send feeds to anyone who signs up. That means whenever you post to your blog all the RSS subscribers will get that post.

Can you begin to see how powerful a marketing tool this can be? Every time you would post a new article, review or product sales suggestion, your list of RSS subscribers would automatically find this information on their computers. You don't have to worry about spam filters or anything that might interfere with email delivery. RSS feeds don't suffer from those problems, not yet anyway.

You could develop marketing plans targeting RSS subscribers. How easy would it be to do affiliate marketing with a solid list of RSS subscribers? You post a review of an affiliate product with your affiliate link and it would automatically be delivered directly to their computer.

In addition to that, your subscribers would have the opportunity to leave comments back on the blog if they are so inclined. That way you get instant feedback as to what you are doing wrong or right. It makes it easier and faster to adjust your marketing in reaction to that feedback.

Staying on top of technology is important to you as an internet marketer. New technology usually leads to new ways to market online. RSS is one of the newest ways to market to a target audience. Blogs are currently the easiest way to generate RSS feeds. By utilizing RSS and your blog you can create another stream of internet marketing to add to your overall online plan.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, follow successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, from Ray Johnson - Google.com No.1 Ranked Internet Marketer.

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

Entrepreneurs are Perfect for the Stock Market

Entrepreneurs definitely dont have a monopoly on how to earn cash fast. The dreams of turning small money into a vast financial empire have always existed in one form or another. The global economy and the Internet have created a new genre of entrepreneurs. However, the stock market has always had its own entrepreneurs. The stock market is also full of individuals wanting to experience large returns from a great idea or investment.

Entrepreneurs definitely know how to dream up an idea and act on it, at least the ones who are willing to do the work anyway. These are people who are not content working for a large corporation but instead want to become that large corporation themselves. Entrepreneurs are people who are willing to take sometimes great risks to make more money and see their idea become profitable.

If this describes you or someone you know then you know someone who would probably love investing in the stock market. Investing consists of a good amount of research but also a great amount of guesswork and speculation. It involves taking risks that many times others are too timid to take. These are the people who really make the money in the stock market. Yes they also lose money but they learn from this and move forward making calculated adjustments in their strategy.

Investors are aware of the risks depending on the investment and so are entrepreneurs. However, this does not stop them from taking the necessary steps to riches. Investors sometimes trust their hunches invest in a stock even though everyone else is saying sell. This applies to entrepreneurs as well.

You see, there are so many similarities in investors and entrepreneurs. Of course entrepreneurs can be more associated with higher risk investments such as penny stocks but this is certainly not the only stock they would be involved in. They take on only the risk that is required of them to position themselves for profit. This does not mean that investors or entrepreneurs are crazy. In fact they are just as sensitive about the risks as anyone else. It all comes down to a willingness to do what others are simply too scared to do.

So if you are an entrepreneur then guess what, you have exactly what it takes to make quite the living in the stock market. You have the guts and tenacity to make bold moves at the right time.

Scott Johns conducts research and analysis of stock market picks and trends. To check out some of his company's latest picks go to http://thequarry.net

Internet Marketing Mistake #1: The Wrong Way To Build A List

They say, in internet marketing, the money is in the list. Everything you read about, learn about, take courses about internet marketing all say how important it is to build your own list. Knowing how important a list is, many make a fundamental mistake in building a list. If you make this mistake it could cost you big time.

There are a number of ways to build a list. For the most part you must create a marketing plan, generate traffic, get subscribers from that traffic and slowly build your list. As with most things, people are always looking for a shortcut. List building is no exception.

As people look for shortcuts, there is always an abundance of those who try and take advantage of that desire. You may have seen on the internet offers to sell targeted lists. These lists are claimed to be fresh opt in lists of people who really want to hear about what you are trying to market.

In most cases, this can't be farther from the truth. This particular type of list is know as co-reg lists. Usually the names and address come from leads inadvertently clicking a check box or even more commonly not noticing that they needed to uncheck a box on a website where they may have purchased a product or signed up for someone else's list.

The purveyors of these lists make it sound like this is the easiest way to get up and running with a list. They make claims like: get 60,000 fresh targeted leads each month. I have seen some offering 1 million fresh leads a month. Sounds too good to be true. You know, when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. This is a classic example.

Here is what happens with this list. First, you have to have your own autoresponder on your own server. If you are using a third party like Aweber, you will find that there is no way to import those lists into it. That is because Aweber values their reputation and won't allow you to populate lists on their site with Co-reg lists.

Once you have your autoresponder that you can actually load the list into, and you start sending emails, chances are upon trying to sign on to your site a short time later and find this message: ACCOUNT SUSPENDED!

This is because unless you bought a dedicated server, which costs hundreds per month you probably exceeded the hosts bandwidth. That results in an automatic shutdown of your site.

The next thing that happens is the host starts to get spam complaints. The leads you bought usually don't know or forgot that they signed up so they mark your emails as spam. Your ip address becomes banned from the major providers like AOL and Yahoo. Even if you get the autoresponder shut off and your account reactivated, future communication from your site will be difficult because now your site is known as a spam site.

There are some who claim they have had success with Co-Regs. That may be the case, but you will notice in any information that shows you how to use Co-Regs, they warn you to never use your main website. In fact they basically suggest you use a throw away site. They know that eventually it will be shut down.

Building a good list is very rewarding. It is the basis for your online income. Don't try and take shortcuts. Trying to shortcut your way to a big list by using Co-Reg lists can be a big mistake.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - a top rated internet marketer.

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

A Guide To Successful Articles

Articles are an important part of internet marketing. It is one of the best ways to generate free traffic to your websites. But what makes a good article? What do articles need be accepted by the article directories? Most importantly, what has to be included in every article to make sure the article drives traffic.

There are six components to a successful article. When I say successful article I am referring to an article that can be accepted by article directories, will be picked up by publishers, helps your search engine ranking and generates direct traffic to your website.

The first component is the keywords you want your article associated with. You should know this ahead of time because you want to make sure you utilize your keywords in a normal fashion through out your article. You will also need to list keywords when you submit your article.

Related to the keyword is the category you will want to list it under. It should be a category that anyone searching for your keywords would naturally look under. Again, you will need to have a category in mind when you submit to the directories.

The next component is the title. Your title should accomplish two things. It should create enough interest to motivate a reader to want to see the whole article and it should have some keywords in it.

Next is a summary. This is a one to three sentence synopsis of the article. Like the title, this should entice someone to want to read the whole article and should include a keyword phrase.

The main component of the article is the body. This is the full article itself. It needs to be interesting and relevant to the reader. It should contain useful information. It should be written in an easy to understand format, almost like you are talking to friend.

The body of the article must have correct spelling. There is nothing that destroys your credibility as an author faster than misspellings in your article. Lastly, while you need to have a number of mentions of your keyword in your article, you must not spam it with keywords. Use them, again, like you are explaining something to a friend.

The final part of a successful article is the most important. This is your resource box. Your resource box is where you sell your reader on the idea to click on the included URL to go to your site and sign up or buy. You should include your URL linked to two main keywords. That way the search engines will associate that keyword to your URL and help your ranking for that keyword.

The resource box is your chance to get the reader to take an action. That action is to click on the link you have in the resource box. You can have two links but not more than two. More than two will disqualify you from most article directories. You don't want to hard sell your reader but you do want to try and stimulate their curiosity enough so that between the useful information you gave them in the article and the message in your resource box they have no option but to click on your link.

Article writing is not hard but to do it right you need the six components discussed here. Each of those components has a specific purpose and needs to be written to satisfy that purpose. If you follow these guidelines you will have successful articles.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow a successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - a top rated internet marketer.

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

Blog Traffic Methods

Blogs have become a major new tool in the marketing arsenal of online marketers. It is part of the phenomenon known as web 2.0. Web 2.0 is the name used to describe interactive web interfaces, where the end user supplies much of the content.

For your blog to be an effective marketing tool, it still needs the same requirement of any successful website, traffic. With out traffic your blog is no more than a personal diary that you have locked up in a drawer. No one will ever see it. The logical question follows, How do you get traffic to your blog?

If you are familiar with some of the methods of driving traffic to a conventional website, then you know some of the ways to get traffic to your blog. All the methods that work with a website will also work with a blog.

Those methods would include pay per click advertising, article marketing, PR releases, paid advertising, and search engine optimization. The only difference is you send the traffic to your blog instead of to your website. The advantage of traffic generation for blogs is you have tools available beyond the traditional methods.

Blogs allow you to go beyond the conventional traffic generation methods because of their special attributes. By their nature, blogs are highly volatile sites. They are constantly being updated with new content. New posts are made and new comments are submitted, often multiple times a day.

Because blogs change so quickly readers want to know when there is new content on blogs that they are interested in. Because of this some new notification tools evolved. One involves what is known as pinging.

Because blogs change so fast, as a way of keeping track of the changed blogs, search sites needed to keep track of blog changes. Most blogs can automatically notify or ping these search sites each time there is a new post or a post that was updated. These search sites take this information and create a separate database that can be searched that is composed entirely of new blog material.

You need to make sure that your blog can automatically ping the search sites. Once you determine that then you need to make sure that it is configured properly to do that. Last you need to know which sites are being pinged so that you can make sure you are notifying the most popular sites.

A search on Google can get you some good information on blog search engines that you can ping. One of the most popular is Technorati. You can go to Technorati.com and find instructions that teach you how to set up pinging to her site no matter what blog system you are using.

As blogs and blog directories continued to evolve so did pinging resources. There are free services now that you can ping that will turn around and relay that ping to dozens of blog search engines. Using a service like that can greatly simplify your new post notifications. A well known one is Pingomatic.com.

Blog traffic generation is evolving at a rapid pace. The conventional traffic methods still work to drive traffic to your blog. To maximize your blog traffic you need to utilize new tools that have evolved along with blogs themselves. One of the most important is pinging. Make sure you are notifying the best blog search directories every time your blog changes. The more places readers can find your blog listed, the more traffic you stand to gain.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow a successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - a top rated internet marketer.

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

Best eBay Selling Tip In 10 Years

More than 90% of people on ebay will find your auction through the normal search bar located on the top of any ebay site. Which means they are just going to type in the keyword for what they are looking for and the auctions are listed in front of them.

In fact, study shows that 90% of eBay buyers use the search bar to find what they are looking for. 90% of eBay buyers are a big group of people if you ask me. But do you know on what factors does the position of your auction is determined when a user searches for it on eBay? For example:

Lets say I'm selling a beer and wine making kit and my title is: Wine making kit better than beer machine and mr beer. Now any time a person searching on ebay uses any combinations of those words, my auction will show up. Let me give you an example: So if someone types in: 'Home Beer Kit', my auction will show up or even if they typed in 'Beer Home Kit' STILL, the same auction will show up. Test this out yourself, you will be astonished.

Now, instead of using the title: 'Wine making kit better than beer machine and mr beer', as this would violate eBay's auction title policy - since I am not selling Mr.beer or Beer Machine, but my own beer and wine kit. I can still use this type of word placement to my advantage.

I can use an auction tile that reads: Best Wine Kit Mr Fast Machine Beer Maker. This is 100% legit on ebay and you got all your keywords in that auction title! Including your competitors keywords. Pretty neat eh! Now when people search for Fast Beer Maker, they will find my auction and when they search for Mr Beer, they will find my auction too.

What a great auction title tip! I wanted to make a point with this article and that is as long as the keywords your target market is typing for is in the title of your ebay auction, when a user searches on ebay, they will be presented with your auction. Regardless of the arrangement of those keywords.

Try it out and test it yourself. Take advantage of your competition or the established brands that are selling what you are. I never would have learned this little trick if I didn't keep testing out different keywords and key phrases. I actually discovered this nifty trick upon accident and was naturally very pleased.

Try out different key phrases and keywords that you think people might be using and see which one brings in the most targeted traffic. Also no matter what you are selling right now, you probably have competition. See if you can break down your competitors brand names into different keywords and put them in your auction title.

This is a very good of getting targeted traffic that will take action when they see your auction. Plus remember, its not about having high traffic keywords, its about having keywords that convert to sales.

The best way to find this out is by testing different keywords in your auction title. Assume nothing, test everything. This is how you become a success in business, especially an internet business.

June Beezy is the founder of http://www.wdclub.com - home of the free dropshipper list directory.

Marketing Online for Your Business

The Internet, as well as being a fantastic source of information, is also a tremendous platform for business and commerce. With that comes the development of many different business mechanisms, which adapt as they cross from the real to the virtual trading environment. One of those functionalities, which have been well adapted to form an entirely new discipline for online business is online marketing. By combining a diverse range of different advertising and promotional channels, website owners have effectively created their own rules when it comes to online promotion, and to have any chance of online commercial success, these must be fully embraced.

One of the fastest growing sectors of online business is pay-per-action marketing, primarily in the form of pay-per-click. Pay-per-click works by displaying an advert with a link straight through to the advertiser's site. Rather than charging per impression, or for the duration of the ad, the advertiser pays only for every click through, which means theoretically, the advertiser is only paying for each interested sales lead. This may initially sound like an attractive and cost effective way to go, but there are a variety of problems with the medium which could eventually lead to its downfall.

One of the most critical problems faced by pay-per-click is what has been deemed 'click fraud'. Click fraud is where competitors deliberately click on adverts to run up the PPC budget, which can result in advertisers paying for advertising that hasn't even produce a single interested visitor to their site. However, many PPC suppliers are working tirelessly to try to remedy the situation, and they seem to be beginning to get a grasp on how best to avoid the problem in future.

Another evergreen online marketing method is that of search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of making modifications to websites and combining off-site strategies to boost search engine rankings, which will ultimately result in more coverage for the website in question. In fact, SEO is such a powerful tool, that it is possible to move almost any website to one of the top few pages on major search engine results under specific keywords very quickly. For this reason, SEO is big business, and many websites of all sizes reap the benefits of SEO spend in their sales and profit margins every single year.

Online marketing comprises a range of alien marketing concepts, which traditional businesses must grasp if they are to succeed online. All in all, online marketing is a highly lucrative area, and the potential rewards are very high for those that successfully come to terms with these new marketing methods.

Jonathon Hardcastle writes articles for http://universeofjobs.com/ - In addition, Jonathon also writes articles for http://computerinformationsource.com/ and http://letstalkaboutbusiness.com/

Internet Marketing: Why You Need A List

There is a mantra you hear often while learning about internet marketing: "The money is in the list". Every successful internet marketer talks about his list. There is all kind of advice on how to build a list. Sometimes lost in all this list building information is "Why do you need a list?"

First, let's make it clear what is meant by a list. A list is your personal database of leads that have shown that they are interested in your niche market. Not only are they interested in your niche, but they have given you permission to send them emails with information about that niche.

The most successful internet marketers use a large part of their marketing efforts just to build a list. Many online marketers would rather have a lead sign up for their list than have them buy something without signing up. Why do they value a list so greatly?

The most difficult part of internet marketing is finding a targeted group to market to. By having a list, you already have a targeted group that has given you permission to market to them. This allows you to develop a relationship with them as you provide them information and suggest products they may want to buy. It is much easier to market and sell to your list than it is cold leads. The best part is, you can market and sell to them over and over again.

To illustrate the value of a list, think about infomercials that you see on TV all the time. The infomercial companies spend millions of dollars on those advertising campaigns. You may not know this, but their purpose, in most cases, is not to sell the item they are pitching on TV, rather it is to get you on their list.

Most infomercial companies loose money on every TV offer they sell. They know that once you buy from them, they will be able to market to you again and again. It is on the second purchase you make from them that they start to make a profit. Of course, if you buy from them a third or fourth time then they are way ahead.

Your list is the same way. Every lead that subscribes to your list is valuable to you. Your initial product sales to your list may not be one you can retire over but if you have defined your niche properly and your list is built with leads that are highly interested in your niche, you will see how easy it becomes to sell to them at higher and higher prices.

The secret is to market to them again and again. As a general rule, those that buy from you once are more likely to buy from you again. You need your own list because it becomes the foundation of your online business. It provides you with a customer base that is looking for information about your niche. Having your own list makes it much easier to be an internet marketing success.

To find out how you can successfully make a living online, and follow successful and highly profitable advice to making money online, talk with Ray Johnson - a top rated internet marketer.

http://www.ray-johnson.co.uk/

Making Your Fortune with eBay

More Americans than ever before are turning to the internet to make extra money to supplement their incomes. Some of these individuals have become so successful with their internet operations they have quit their day jobs to focus on their internet businesses exclusively. Many of these people have turned to eBay as a way of earning money.

The great thing about eBay is that it is a way to start making money immediately, and it requires none of the investment capital you would need to start almost any other home based business. Like most things worthwhile in this world, running an eBay business is easy to learn, but difficult to master. With skill and research, however, you can turn your eBay business into a real cash cow.

One of the easiest and most common ways to get started on the internet auction giant is to simply find things around the house you have no further use for. These items, which would have otherwise sat around collecting dust or been on the next train straight for the county dump, could be an excellent entry point to making money on eBay. Of course, there is junk and then there is junk. One man's trash may not be anyone's treasure. Do a little research and see what similar items have been selling for. You may not be able to get enough out of them to make it worth your while. On the other hand, selling even the smallest items in an efficient manner can begin to increase your seller's rating, which will be invaluable for your dealings in the future.

If you find you enjoyed the selling process and want to jump in with both feet, you'll need to decide what your niche market is going to be. The best selling eBayers have a very defined target audience to whom they sell their wares. Think of about ten things you might want to sell on eBay, and research each one to see what the market history is like on these types of items. You'll be looking for two things: saleability and market saturation. For instance, you may think selling small swatches of carpet is a great way to make your fortune. The market may disagree. On the other hand, selling used video games might be a losing battle because so many on eBay are already doing the same thing.

One way you can begin making money on eBay with little consideration for the cost of purchasing stock, is by writing and selling ebooks. If you have a topic which you are an authority on (or could easily make yourself an authority on through research), and you have some competent writing skills, you can create an ebook and sell it on eBay. All the profit you make will be yours to keep, and the best of these books have been known to do rather well on the open auction market.

Before doing anything, however, take a trip to your local bookstore and pick up a guide or two written by those who have made a success of themselves on eBay. You may find there is plenty to learn about selling on the auction site you would have never thought of on your own. It never hurts to go into the marketplace prepared.

Nick Angeli is a professional internet marketer who specializes in teaching others how to be successful with internet marketing. If you want to get in touch with Nick or learn more about network marketing success please visit: http://www.MyHomeBizLife.com